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Rh asked point blank, unable to bear the suspense any longer. "Really a criminal--is he?"

"I wanted to tell you the other day," he said quickly. "Only you were too ill. I thought it would upset you."

"Criminal? Tell me at once. He may be in any minute. I must know."

"His reputation is bad," was the reply, "as bad as it could be. I've heard things about him. He's already been in gaol. He's supposed to be a bit dangerous."

I was listening for the sound of a step on the stairs. I lowered my voice a little. It was clear to me that Grant did not want to tell me all he knew.

"So--what do you make, then, of this?" I asked in a half whisper, pointing to the documents.

He looked at me hard a moment, then gave his reply, also in an undertone:

"Practising--I think."

I did not understand him. The uncertainty of his meaning, the queer suggestion in the word he used, gave my imagination a horrid twist. I asked again, my heart banging against my ribs:

"Practising--what?"

"He didn't think it a successful--copy--so he tore it up," Grant explained.

"You mean--forgery?"

"I think so. That is--I'm afraid so."

I think the universe changed for me in that moment; something I had been standing on for years collapsed; I was left hanging in space without a platform, without a rudder. An odd helplessness came over me. Grant, of course, had only confirmed my own suspicions, had merely put into words what, actually, I had known for a long time; but it was just this hearing the verdict spoken by another that hurt so abominably. Grant had quietly torn off me the last veil of self-deception. I could no longer pretend to myself. It seems absurdly out of proportion now on looking back; at the time the shock was appalling.

We talked together, we tried to devise some plan of Rh