But she did not move. She could not tear herself from this comfortless room--this strange circle of melancholy light in which they sat--this beating of the rain in their ears as it dashed against the old and fragile casements. "Oh! my dear," he said suddenly as he watched her, "I have grown so old and cross. And so poor! It has taken far more than the picture"--he pointed to the vacant space--"to carry me through this six months. My schemes have been growing--what motive had I for holding my hand? My friends have often remonstrated--the Jesuits especially. But at last I have had my way. I have far--far less to offer you than I had before." He looked at her in a sad apology. "I have a little money," she said shyly. "I don't believe you ever knew it before." "Have you?" he said in astonishment. "Just a tiny bit. I shall pay my way"--and she laughed happily. "Alan!--have you noticed--how well I have been getting on with the Sisters?--what friends Father Leadham and I made? But no!--you didn't notice anything. You saw me all _en noir_--_all_" she repeated with a mournful change of voice. Then her eyelids fell, and she shivered. "Oh! how you hurt--how you _hurt_!--last night." He passionately soothed her, denouncing himself, asking her pardon. She gave a long sigh. She had a strange sense of having climbed a long stair out of an abyss of misery. Now she was just at the top--just within light and welcome. But the dark was so close behind--one touch! and she was thrust down to it again. "I have only hated two people this last six months," she said at last, _à propos_, apparently, of nothing. "Your cousin, who was to have Bannisdale--and--and--Mr. Williams. I saw him at Cambridge." There was a pause; then Helbeck said, with an agitation that she felt beneath her cheek as her little head rested on his shoulder: "You saw Edward Williams? How did he dare to present himself to you?" He gently withdrew himself from her, and went to stand before the hearth, drawn up to his full stern height. His dark head and striking pale features were fitly seen against the background of the old wall. As he stood there he was the embodiment of his race, of its history, its fanaticisms, its "great refusals" at once of all mean joys and all new freedoms. To a few chosen notes in the universe, tender response and exquisite vibration--to all others, deaf, hard, insensitive, as the stone of his old house. Laura looked at him with a mingled adoration and terror. Then she hastily explained how and where she had met Williams. "And you felt no sympathy for him?" said Helbeck, wondering. She flushed. "I knew what it must have been to you. And--and--he showed no sense of it." Her tone was so simple, so poignant, that Helbeck smiled only that he might not weep. Hurriedly coming to her he kissed her soft hair.