instances. He worked most of all in the East End, he told Frida
confidentially: there he could see best the remote results of
certain painful English customs and usages he was anxious to study.
Still, he often went west, too; for the West End taboos, though not
in some cases so distressing as the East End ones, were at times
much more curiously illustrative and ridiculous. He must master all
branches of the subject alike. He spoke so seriously that after a
time Frida, who was just at first inclined to laugh at his odd way
of putting things, began to take it all in the end quite as
seriously as he did. He felt more at home with her than with
anybody else at Brackenhurst. She had sympathetic eyes; and he
lived on sympathy. He came to her so often for help in his
difficulties that she soon saw he really meant all he said, and was
genuinely puzzled in a very queer way by many varied aspects of
English society.

In time the two grew quite intimate together. But on one point
Bertram would never give his new friend the slightest information;
and that was the whereabouts of that mysterious "home" he so often
referred to. Oddly enough, no one ever questioned him closely on
the subject. A certain singular reserve of his, which alternated
curiously with his perfect frankness, prevented them from
trespassing so far on his individuality. People felt they must not.
Somehow, when Bertram Ingledew let it once be felt he did not wish
to be questioned on any particular point, even women managed to
restrain their curiosity: and he would have been either a very bold
or a very insensitive man who would have ventured to continue
questioning him any further. So, though many people hazarded
guesses as to where he had come from, nobody ever asked him the
point-blank question: Who are you, if you please, and what do you