It is evening again now, almost the same hour at which Jim and Elizabeth were beheading photographs twenty-four hours ago. Twenty-four hours! It feels more like twenty-four years. This is what he says to himself as he once again opens the door of the Le Marchants' apartment. It is the first time during the whole day, except to snatch a couple of mouthfuls of food, that he has left Byng's side; and it is only due to the fact that Mrs. Le Marchant is supplying his place, and has sent him on a message to her daughter, that he has quitted his post. He knows that she has meant to do him a kindness in despatching him upon this errand; but he is not sure that it is one. Elizabeth is not in the _salon_, but the screen that masks the door separating that room from the little alcove beyond is folded back. Over the doorway is a hanging of Eastern embroidery--as to the meaning of the strange gold scrolls that look like Arab letters on whose red ground Elizabeth and he have often idly speculated. He pushes it aside, and sees her standing with her back towards him, the flimsy muslin window-curtains drawn back as she looks out on the night. The alcove is on ordinary occasions scarcely ever occupied, and there is something uneasy and uncomfortable that matches the wretchedness of her other circumstances in finding her standing there alone and idle. The elements have long finished their raging, and fallen to boisterous play. It has been a fine day, and though the sun has long laid down his sceptre, he has passed it on with scarcely diminished, though altered, radiance to his white imitator. It is broad moonlight--startlingly broad. The moon hangs overhead, with never a cloud-kerchief about her great disk. The winds that, loudly sporting, are up and abroad have chased every vapour from the sky, which is full of throbbing white stars. Before he reaches her side she has heard him, and turned to meet him, with a mixed hunger and pitiful hope in her wan face. She thinks that he has come to fetch her. He must kill that poor hope, and the quicklier the more mercifully. "Mrs. Le Marchant sent me. I came to tell you that he has recovered consciousness. You see, you were wrong"-with an attempt at a reassuring smile--"he is not dead, after all. He is conscious; that is to say, he is not insensible; but I am afraid he is not quite himself yet, and you must not--must not mind--must not be frightened, I mean--if he begins to shout out and talk nonsense by-and-by: the doctor says it is what we must expect." "And may I--mayn't I--will not you let me?" What a quivering voice the hope has, and yet how alive it is! However clumsily, and with whatever bitter yearnings over the pain he is causing her, he must knock it on the head at once. "Go to him?--impossible! quite out of the question! The great object is to keep him perfectly quiet, and if once he caught sight of you--"