“He is not going to die, Dr Hodder,” she said quietly. Something went through his body that warmed it curiously. He felt a thrill, as one who is seized by a great, overpowering excitement. She preceded them into the hall. Brood came last. He closed the door behind him after a swift glance about the room that had been his most private retreat for years. He was never to set foot inside its walls again. In that single glance he bade farewell to it for ever. It was a hated, unlovely spot. He had spent an age in it during those bitter morning hours, an age of imprisonment. On the landing below they came upon Lydia. She was seated on a window-ledge, leaning wearily against the casement. She did not rise as they approached, but watched them with steady, smouldering eyes in which there was no friendliness, no compassion. They were her enemies; they had killed the thing she loved. Brood's eyes met hers for an instant, and then fell before the bitter look they encountered. His shoulders drooped as he passed close by her motionless figure and followed the doctor down the hall to the bedroom door. It opened and closed an instant later and he was with his son. For a long time Lydia's sombre, piteous gaze hung upon the door through which he had passed and which was closed so cruelly against her, the one who loved him best of all. At last she looked away; her attention was caught by a queer, clicking sound near at hand. She was surprised to find Yvonne Brood standing close beside her, her eyes closed and her fingers telling the beads that ran through her fingers, her lips moving in voiceless prayer. The girl watched her dully for a few moments, then with growing fascination. The incomprehensible creature was praying! To Lydia this seemed to be the most unnatural thing in all the world. She could not associate prayer with this woman's character; she could not imagine her having been in all her life possessed of a fervent religious thought. It was impossible to think of her as being even hypocritically pious. Lydia began to experience a strange feeling of irritation. She turned her face away, unwilling to be a witness to this shallow mockery. She was herself innately religious. In her secret soul she resented an appeal to Heaven by this luxurious worldling; she could not bring herself to think of her as anything else. Prayer seemed a profanation on her scarlet lips.