He was crossing Putney Bridge. Night had fallen, and the full brilliant moon showed a narrow stream crawling between two broad flats of mud. Just below the bridge a barge lay at anchor; the silhouette of a man moved leisurely about on it, and then a boat detached itself from the stem of the barge and dropped down river into darkness. On the bridge busses and waggons rattled noisily. Young men with straw hats and girls in white blouses and black skirts passed to and fro in pairs, some chattering, some silent. The sight of these couples gave Richard an idea for the abandoned "Psychology of the Suburbs." What if Mr. Aked recovered? He remembered his sister telling him that their grandfather had survived after having been three times surrendered to death by the doctors. "The Psychology of the Suburbs" began to attract him. It might come to completion, if Mr. Aked lived, and then.... But what about those evenings with the lonely Adeline? The two vistas of the future clashed with and obscured each other, and he was overcome by vague foreboding. He saw Mr. Aked struggling for breath in the mean suburban bedroom, and Adeline powerless at his side. The pathos of her position became intolerable. * * * * * When he got back to Carteret Street, it was she who came to the door. "How is he?" "About the same. The nurse has come. She told me to go to bed at once, but I don't feel as if I wanted to sleep. You will sit down a little?" She took the rocking-chair, and leaning back with a gesture of lassitude rocked gently; her white face, with the red eyes and drooping eyelids, gave sign of excessive fatigue, and on her lips there was a gloomy pout. After she had described Mr. Aked's condition in some detail and told what the doctor had said, they sat silent for a while in that tense atmosphere which seems to stifle vitality in a house of dangerous sickness. Overhead the nurse moved about, making the window rattle softly now and then. "You have known uncle a long time, haven't you?" "Not at all," Richard answered. "It's a very funny thing, but though I seem to know him quite well, I've not met him half a dozen times in my life. I saw him first about a year ago, and then I met him again the other day at the British Museum, and after we'd had dinner together we were just like old friends." "I certainly thought from what he said that you _were_ old friends. Uncle has so few friends. Except one or two neighbours I do believe you are the first person that has ever called at this house since I came to live here." "At any rate, we have soon got to know each other," said Richard, smiling. "It isn't a week since you asked me if my name was Larch." She returned the smile, though rather mechanically. "Perhaps my mistake about your being an old friend of Uncle Aked's explains that," she said. "Well, we won't bother about explaining it; there it is, and if I can help you in any way just now, you must tell me."