Mrs. Jael led him along a gallery, and opened a door at the end thereof. She stood back waiting for him to cross the threshold, and then, as though she had had her orders, she swung the door to and turned the key in the lock. Stephen Gore turned with a start, hesitated, biting his lip, and then let things take their course. The room was lit by a single candle; the boards and walls were bare, and there was little in it save the four-post bed. A great fire burned on the hearth, and the air felt hot and heavy, and full of the indescribable scent of sickness. “Stephen!” He forced back his shoulders, gave a tug to his cravat, and turned toward the bed. The curtains were drawn back, and on the white pillow he saw a dusky, swollen face—a face that might haunt a man till the day of his death. “Stephen, are you there?” My lord looked shocked despite himself, as though thinking of the face that he had kissed not many days ago. “Why, Nan, how is it with you?” Her breathing was labored, her lips cracked and dry, and the hand that she stretched out to him swung up and down, like a branch in the wind. “I cannot see you; my eyes are touched.” He looked at her helplessly, half loathing the thing he saw, and yet unnerved by a blind rush of pity that beat and shook the pedestal of self. “Stephen, don’t come near me if you are afraid.” She might have reproached him with the pusillanimous prudence he had shown in keeping away from her until this night. And, vain woman that she had been, she felt that it was the threat alone that had brought him to her. Yet she spoke calmly at first, and feebly, like one who had come to a sense of awe and of the end. My lord put the best dignity he could upon it, but he felt the heat and the wilfulness in him growing cold. “You have sent for me, Nan—” “It is not the first time.” “I should have come before, but I have been pressed and driven by a hundred things.” Instinctively she turned her face toward him on the pillow, though she could not see him because the disease had blinded her. “Let us make no excuses to-night, Stephen. Do you know that I am dying?” “No, Nan—not that.” She gave a long sigh, and her hands moved to and fro over the coverlet. “Yes. I am dying. You know why—I have sent for you.” “What is your desire?” He stood looking at her in some astonishment and with unwilling awe, for she whom he had always led seemed mistress of herself under the shadow of death, and not the weeping, pleading, terrified thing that he had thought to find. “Stephen, you must go to-night.” He faced up as though to attention. “Go? Where?” “Need I tell you that?” “My heart, you are ill—and distraught.” She raised herself on the pillow with a sudden energy of passion; her poor marred face could not express it, but her voice had a deep, fierce thrill that came from the heart of the world. “Man, man, do not play with me to-night, as you have played with me these many years!” “Anne, if you will listen to me—”