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that?"
    He said, in a very strange voice: "Oddly enough, I had."
    For a moment our eyes met, and held. I had the oddest feeling that for just those few seconds each knew what the other was thinking.
    I said abruptly: "I must go. Really. Please, let's leave it at that, I won't annoy you by telling you again that it's been interesting. It's been—quite an experience. But forgive me if I say it's one I don't want to take any further. I mean that. Thank you for your offer of help. It was kind of you. And now this really is good-bye
    ..."
    I held out my hand. The formal gesture seemed, in these surroundings, and after what had passed, faintly absurd, but it would, I hoped, give the touch of finality to the interview, and provide the cue on which I could turn my back and leave him standing there.
    To my relief, after a moment's hesitation, he made no further protest. He took the hand quite simply, in a sort of courteous recognition of defeat.
    "Good-bye, then, Mary Grey. I'm sorry. All the best."
    As I left him I was very conscious of him standing there and staring after me.

CHAPTER II
    Whisht! lads, haad your gobs An' Aa'll tell ye aal an aajul story.

    C. F. LEUMANE : The Lambton Worm.

    THE woman was there again.
    For the last three days, punctually at the same time, she had pushed her way through the crowded aisles of the Kasbah Coffee House, and had found herself a seat in a corner. This last fact alone argued a good deal of stubborn determination, since at half past five in the afternoon the Kasbah was always crowded. But, either owing to her own fixity of purpose, or to the good manners of the students who, at that time of day, made up most of the Kasbah's. clientele, she got her corner seat every day, and there she sat, sipping her Espresso very slowly, and working her way through a Sausageburger Special, while the brightly-lit cafe-crowd swirled round her table, the deafening babel of young voices earnestly and dogmatically discussing love, death, and the afternoon's lectures against an emphatic background of Messrs. Presley, Inc., and what I had learned to recognise as the Kool Kats' Klub.
    I myself had not noticed the woman until she was pointed out to me. I was on table-duty that week, and was too occupied in weaving my laden way through the crowds to clear the dirty cups away and wipe the scarlet plastic table-tops, to pay much attention to a dull-looking woman in country clothes, sitting alone in a corner. But Norma, from her position behind the Espresso machine, had observed her, and thought her 'queer'. It was Norma's most deadly adjective.
    "She stares, I'm telling you. Not at the students, though take it from me what I see from up here's nobody's business sometimes; the things you see when you haven't got your gun. I mean, take a look at that one, that blonde in the tartan jeans, and when I say in she's only just to say in, isn't she? And I happen to know her da's a professor up at the University. Well, I don't know about a professor, exactly, but he works up in the Science Colleges and that shows you, doesn't it? I mean to say. Two coffees?
    Biscuits? Well, we've got Popoffs and Yumyums and—oh yes, two Scrumpshies ... ta, honey. Pay at the cash desk. The things some people eat, and look at her figure, it stands to reason. Oh yes, the woman in the corner, she's off her rocker, if you ask me, fair gives you the creeps the way she stares. Don't say you hadn't noticed her, it's you she's watching, love, take it from me. All the time. Not so's you'd see it, but every time you're looking away there she is, staring. Nutty as a fruit cake, love, take it from me." "Stares at me, d'you mean?"
    "That's what I'm telling you. Three coffees, one tea. Pay at the desk. Stares at you all the time. Can't seem to take her eyes off you. No, not that girl, she's with that black-haired chap in the Antarctic get-up who's over at the juke-box, would you credit it, he's got that tune again ... Yes, that woman over there under the