“Oh, Toto dear,” she said painfully, “is it as bad as that?” “It’s as bad as that--it’s worse,” he answered. “Then don’t go,” she pleaded. “Stop away. What’s the use of it?” “I can’t,” he said numbly. “It’s no use, but I can’t stop away;” and he added in a fierce whisper: “Get your things on quickly; there’s not much time. I can’t answer for what will happen if you’re not there to safeguard Katya’s interests.” She shivered a little back from him. “Oh, Toto,” she said, “it’s not that I’m thinking of. It’s you, if you’re in such pain.” “Be quick! be quick!” he insisted. Whilst she was putting on her furs she sent in to the room the small, dark, laughing and dumb Kitty. With steps of swift delight, with an air at once jolly and elfin, the small, dark child in her white dress ran to catch hold of the lappets of her uncle’s coat, but for the first time in his life Robert Grimshaw gazed out unseeing over his niece’s head. He brushed her to one side and began to walk feverishly down the room, his white teeth gleaming with an air of fierceness through the bluish-black of his beard and moustache. But even with their haste, it was only by almost running along the platform beside the train that Ellida was able in the dusk to shake the hands of Dudley Leicester and his wife. Grimshaw himself stood behind her, his own hands behind his back. And Ellida had a vision, as slowly the train moved, of a little, death-white, childish face, of a pair of blue eyes, that gazed as if from the face of Death himself, over her shoulder. And then, whilst she fumbled with the flowers in her breast, Pauline Leicester suddenly sank down, her head falling back amongst the cushions, and at the last motion of her hand she dropped on to the platform the small bunch of violets. Ellida leaned forward with a quick and instinctive gesture of rescue. “She’s fainted!” she exclaimed. “Oh, _poor_ child!” The train glided slowly and remorselessly from the platform, and for a long time Robert Grimshaw watched it dwindling out of the shadow of the high station into the shadows of the falling November dusk, until they were all alone on the platform. And suddenly Robert Grimshaw ground the little bunch of flowers beneath his heel vindictively, his teeth showing as they bit his lower lip. “_Toto_!” Ellida exclaimed in a tone of sharp terror and anguish, “why did she throw them to you? She shouldn’t have. But why do you do that?” His voice came harshly from his throat. “They were my flowers--my gift. She was throwing them away. Hadn’t you the sense to see that?” and his voice was cruel. She recoiled minutely, but at his next action she came swiftly forward, her hands outstretched as if to stop him. He had picked up the violets, his lips moving silently. He touched with them each of his wrists, each of his eyes, his lips and his heart.