He noticed her movement and the words that he had intended to say were checked on his lips. He stammered, instead, something about going out. She nodded her head; she had pulled herself together and walked towards him from the window. “Won't you come, too? It is such a lovely day,” he asked her. “I've got a headache.” “It'll do your headache good.” But she shook her head--“No, I'm going upstairs to lie down.” She moved past him to the door. Then with her hand on it she turned back to him:-- “Peter, I--” she said. She seemed to appeal to him with her eyes beseeching, trying to say something, but the rest of her face was dumb. The appeal, the things that she would have said suddenly died, leaving her face utterly without expression. “Bobby and mother are coming to dinner to-night, aren't they?” “Yes--” She passed through the door across the sunlit hall, up the dark stairs. She walked with that hesitating halting step that he knew so well: her small, white hand lay, for a moment on the banisters--then she had disappeared. IV Coming through the hall Peter noticed that there was a letter in the box. He took it out and found, with delight, that it was from Stephen Brant. He had had no word from him since the day when he and Mr. Zanti had paid their fateful visit. The letter said:-- _Dear Mr. Peter, This is a hurried line to tell you that He is dead at last, died in drink cursing and swearing and now her mother and she, poor dear, are going to America and I'm going to look after her hoping that we'll be marrying in a few months' time and so realise my heart's wish. Dear Peter I sail on Thursday from Southampton and would be coming to see you but would not like to inconvenience you as you now are, but my heart is ever the same to you, Dear Boy, and the day will come when we can talk over old times once again. Your affectionate friend, sir, Now about to be made the happiest man in all the world, Stephen. N.B. I hope the little kid is strong and happy. N.B. Zanti goes with us to America having heard of gold in California and is to be my best man when the day comes._ So Stephen's long wait was ended at last. Peter's eyes were dimmed as he put the letter away in his pocket. What a selfish beast, to be sure, must this same Peter Westcott, be, for here he was wishing--yes, almost wishing--that Stephen's happiness had not come to him. Always at the back of everything there had been the thought of Stephen Brant. Let all the pits in the world gape and yawn, there was one person in the world to whom Peter was precious. Now--in America--with a wife... some of the sunlight had gone out of the air and Peter's heart was suddenly cold with that old dread.