The old doctor’s lips came together in a sharp line: without another word he turned and went up the stairs, reluctance in his step. At the landing was a stained glass window, the work of a famous European artist, and the doctor glanced at it with a certain weariness: personally he preferred plate glass and a long glimpse of level fields. He had reached the head of the second broad flight now, and the second door to the left of the wide hall was ajar, the door which was usually shut and locked. Where the doctor stood he could see across the room, for one of the window shutters was open, and it looked still as it had looked twenty-three years before, when Diana was born. There were the same soft and harmonious coloring, the same rich old furniture, the deep-hued Turkey rug on the polished floor, the spotless ruffled curtains. It was unchanged. Life may change a thousand times while these inanimate things remain to mock us with their endurance. The doctor moved resolutely forward and pushed open the door. Colonel Royall was sitting erect in a high-backed chair in the center of the room, his hands clasping the arms, his head bowed, and his kindly blue eyes staring straight before him. He was singularly pale and seemed to have aged twenty years. Dr. Cheyney walked slowly across the room and laid his hand on his old friend’s shoulder,--they had been boys together. “Is it as bad as that, Davy?” he asked. Colonel Royall roused himself with an apparent effort, and looked up with an expression in which patient endurance and great grief were strongly mingled. There was a touch, too, of dignity and reluctance in his manner, yet if he resented the doctor’s intrusion he was too courteous to show it. “I’m pretty hard hit, William,” he said simply, “pretty hard hit all around; there’s not much more to be said--that hasn’t been said already on the street corners and in the market-place.” His wounded pride showed through his manner without destroying his delicate restraint. The doctor drew a chair beside him and sat down unasked. His sympathy was a beautiful thing and needed no voicing; it reached out imperceptible feelers and made him intuitively aware of the raw cut where not even tenderness may lay a finger. “It’s not all gone, David?” he inquired.