"She is quite ready, and I am in the next room, if you want me. Please knock on the wall." Buntingford entered and shut the door. He stood at the foot of the bed. The woman lying on it opened her eyes, and they looked at each other long and silently. The face on the pillow had still the remains of beauty. The powerful mouth and chin, the nose, which was long and delicate, the deep-set eyes, and broad brow under strong waves of hair, were all fused in a fine oval; and the modelling of the features was intensely and passionately expressive. That indeed was at once the distinction and, so to speak, the terror of the face,--its excessive, abnormal individualism, its surplus of expression. A woman to fret herself and others to decay--a woman, to burn up her own life, and that of her lover, her husband, her child. Only physical weakness had at last set bounds to what had once been a whirlwind force. "Anna!" said Buntingford gently. She made a feeble gesture which beckoned him to come nearer--to sit down--and he came. All the time he was sharply, irrelevantly conscious of the little room, the bed with its white dimity furniture, the texts on the distempered walls, the head of the Leonardo Christ over the mantelpiece, the white muslin dressing-table, the strips of carpet on the bare boards, the cottage chairs:--the spotless cleanliness and the poverty of it all. He saw as the artist, who cannot help but see, even at moments of intense feeling. "You thought--I was dead?" The woman in the bed moved her haggard eyes towards him. "Yes, lately I thought it. I didn't, for a long time." "I put that notice in--so that--you might marry again," she said, slowly, and with difficulty. "I suspected that." "But you--didn't marry." "How could I?--when I had no real evidence?" She closed her eyes, as though any attempt to argue, or explain was beyond her, and he had to wait while she gathered strength again. After what seemed a long time, and in a rather stronger voice she said: "Did you ever find out--what I had done?" "I discovered that you had gone away with Rocca--into Italy. I followed you by motor, and got news of you as having gone over the Splugen. My car had a bad accident on the pass, and I was ten weeks in hospital at Chur. After that I lost all trace." "I heard of the accident," she said, her eyes all the while searching out the changed details of a face which had once been familiar to her. "But Rocca wasn't with me then. I had only old Zélie--you remember?" "The old _bonne_--we had at Melun?" She made a sign of assent.--"I never lived with Rocca--till after the child was born." "The child! What do you mean?" The words were a cry. He hung over her, shaken and amazed. "You never knew!"--There was a faint, ghastly note of triumph in her voice. "I wouldn't tell you--after that night we quarrelled--I concealed it. But he is your son--sure enough." "My son!--and he is alive?" Buntingford bent closer, trying to see her face.