The door opened and Hagar entered. She wore the wood-brown dress of yesterday--she was somewhat pale, with circles under her eyes. "Ah, I am sorry!" she said, "but I could not help it. The strike ... and they send the girls to the Island. Two or three of us went to the court--oh, the snaky, blind thing we call Justice!" Her eyes filled. "Pardon! but if you had been there--" She caught herself up, dashed the moisture from her eyes and said--and looked--that she was glad to see them. "We'll put the things away that make your heart ache! I'll go and change, and we'll eat our dinner and have a pleasant, pleasant time!" In a very little while she was back, dressed in white, amethysts in an old and curious setting about her throat. They had been Maria's, and to-night she looked like Maria, lines of the haunted mind about her mouth and between her eyes. Only it was not her personal fate that troubled her, but a wider haunting. At dinner, in the café at the corner table, she told them, when they asked her, a little of where she had been and what she had done during the day, told them of this pitiful case and of that. Then after a moment's silence she said resolutely, "Don't let us talk about these things any more. Let us talk about happy things. Talk to me about yourself, Lily!" "There isn't much to tell," said Lily; "I've been quite terribly sheltered. For years I was ill, and then I grew better. I've travelled a little, and I like Maeterlinck and Vedanta and Bergson, and I play the violin not so badly, and Robert, my husband, is very good to me. I haven't grown much, I am afraid, since I was at Eglantine. But more and more continually I want to grow. Do you remember, at Eglantine--" Dinner was not long. They came down to the grave and fair room with the scarlet autumn leaves and the books, and here Mary Magazine gave them coffee. They sat in their deep chairs and drank it slowly. The talk dropped; they sat in a thoughtful mood. John Fay had a long and easy figure, a bronzed, clean-shaven, humorous face and sea-blue eyes. Lily was slender as a willow wand, with colourless, strong features. Her eyes were dreamy--Hagar remembered how she sat and looked into the fire when they read poetry. Like the faintest, faraway strain of a music not altogether welcome, a line went through her mind,-- "Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles Miles and miles--"