At half-past eight Vincent began to listen for every bell. At nine he asked to have the door set ajar, that he might hear the wheels of her cab in the street. But though many cabs went by, none stopped. "She's missed her train. We didn't give her much time. Look out the next, Kathy." Katherine looked it out. "She'll be here by eleven if she catches the three-o'clock. It gets to Paddington at ten." Vincent closed his eyes and waited patiently till ten. Then he became excited again, the nervous tension increasing with every quarter of an hour. By eleven the street was still, and Vincent strained his ears for every sound. But no sounds were to be heard. It was half-past eleven. A look of fear had come over his face. Katherine could bear it no longer. She went into the next room, where Ted was standing at the window. She laid her hands on his shoulder, clinging to him. "Oh Ted, Ted," she whispered, fiercely. "She'll kill him. He'll _die_ if she doesn't come. And--she isn't coming." Ted had never known his sister do that before. It was horrible, like seeing a man cry. He put his arms round her (he had almost to hold her up), and comforted her as best he could. But she put him from her gently, and went back to her post. "She'll come to-morrow, Vincent," she said. "No. If she were coming, she would have wired." But that was just what Audrey had forgotten to do. By the time she had reached Barnstaple, she was too much taken up with her own tragic importance to think of any small detail of the kind. Vincent had turned over on his side. He had no more hope, and nothing mattered now. He had done his best, but was not going to carry on a trivial dispute with death. But though his spirit had given up the struggle, his body still fought on with its own blind will, a long, weary fight that seemed as if it would never end. Towards morning he became to all appearance unconscious. At seven o'clock the front-door bell rang; there was a stir in the hall and the sound of Mrs. Rogers' voice whispering. Then the door opened and closed softly. Audrey was standing there, a strange figure in the dim white room, wrapped in her bearskins, and glowing with life and the fresh morning air. At first she could distinguish nothing in the shaded light. Then she made out Ted, sitting with his back to her at the foot of the bed, and Katherine standing at the head of it. But when she saw the motionless figure raised by pillows, and vaguely defined under the disordered bedclothes, a terror seized her, and she hid her face in her hands. "Come here, Audrey," said Katherine, gently. And she came--gliding, trembling, as she had come to him that afternoon at Chelsea, a year and a half ago. But she kept her eyes fixed on Katherine. She was afraid to look _there_. "Take his hand. Speak to him."