"Amiable personality," I observed seeing Fyne on the point of falling into a brown study.
But I could not help adding with meaning: "He hadn't the gift of prophecy though."
Fyne got up suddenly with a muttered "No, evidently not." He was gloomy, hesitating. I
supposed that he would not wish to play chess that afternoon. This would dispense me
from leaving my rooms on a day much too fine to be wasted in walking exercise. And I
was disappointed when picking up his cap he intimated to me his hope of seeing me at
the cottage about four o'clock--as usual.
"It wouldn't be as usual." I put a particular stress on that remark. He admitted, after a
short reflection, that it would not be. No. Not as usual. In fact it was his wife who hoped,
rather, for my presence. She had formed a very favourable opinion of my practical
sagacity.
This was the first I ever heard of it. I had never suspected that Mrs. Fyne had taken the
trouble to distinguish in me the signs of sagacity or folly. The few words we had
exchanged last night in the excitement--or the bother--of the girl's disappearance, were
the first moderately significant words which had ever passed between us. I had felt
myself always to be in Mrs. Fyne's view her husband's chess-player and nothing else--a
convenience--almost an implement.
"I am highly flattered," I said. "I have always heard that there are no limits to feminine
intuition; and now I am half inclined to believe it is so. But still I fail to see in what way
my sagacity, practical or otherwise, can be of any service to Mrs. Fyne. One man's
sagacity is very much like any other man's sagacity. And with you at hand--"
Fyne, manifestly not attending to what I was saying, directed straight at me his worried
solemn eyes and struck in:
"Yes, yes. Very likely. But you will come--won't you?"
I had made up my mind that no Fyne of either sex would make me walk three miles
(there and back to their cottage) on this fine day. If the Fynes had been an average
sociable couple one knows only because leisure must be got through somehow, I would
have made short work of that special invitation. But they were not that. Their undeniable
humanity had to be acknowledged. At the same time I wanted to have my own way. So I
proposed that I should be allowed the pleasure of offering them a cup of tea at my
rooms.
A short reflective pause--and Fyne accepted eagerly in his own and his wife's name. A
moment after I heard the click of the gate-latch and then in an ecstasy of barking from
his demonstrative dog his serious head went past my window on the other side of the
