So the arrangement was made, and it promised, to my thinking, as I lay in bed, another queer evening. Somebody, surely, would break the thin ice on which Arsenio was cutting his capers! What if we all began to speak our true thoughts about one another? But the evening that I was recalling held still something more in it—the most vivid of all its impressions, although the whole of it was vivid enough in my memory. Godfrey rose to take his leave. “Till to-morrow, then!” he said, as he took Lucinda’s hand, bowing slightly over it; he pressed it, I think, for her fingers stiffened and she frowned—Arsenio standing by, smiling. “See him down the stairs, Arsenio,” she ordered. “The light’s very dim, and two or three of the steps are broken.” The two went out! I heard Arsenio’s voice chattering away in the distance as they went down the high steep stairs. Lucinda stood where she was for a minute, and then came across to the chair on which I had sat down, after saying good-night to Godfrey. She dropped on her knees beside it, laying her arms across my knees, and looking up at me with eyes full of tears. “I do pity him,” she murmured, “I do! And I’d be kind to him. I don’t want him to go on being as bitter and unhappy as he is—oh, you saw! One can’t help being amused, but every time he hit Godfrey, he hit himself too—and harder. But what’s the use? Nothing’s any use except the thing that I can’t do!” I laid my hand on hers—they lay side by side on my knee. “It’s rather a case of ‘God help us all!’ I think.” “You too?” “Yes—when you’re unhappy.” I felt her hands rise under my hand, and I released them. She took mine between hers and raised it to her lips. Then a silence fell between us, until I became conscious that Arsenio was standing on the threshold, holding the knob of the opened door. He had stolen back with the quietness of a cat; we had neither of us heard a sound of him. Lucinda saw him, and slowly rose to her feet; she was without a trace of embarrassment. She walked across to the door; he held it wide open for her to pass—she always went upstairs alone—But to-night—against the custom of their nightly parting during the last week—she stopped and took his hand. Her back was towards me now; I could not see her eyes, but there must have been an invitation in them, for he slowly advanced his head towards hers. She did not need to stoop—she was as tall as he was. She kissed him on the forehead. “If you will be content with peace, peace let it be,” she said. He made no motion to return the kiss—the invitation could not have carried so far as that; he stood quite still while she passed out and while her footsteps sounded on the stairs. There came the noise of a door opening and shutting, up above us, on the top floor. He shut the door that he had been still holding, and came slowly up to the hearthrug, by which I sat.