Sybil's hands gripped the arms of the windsor chair. Was he really--was it through her that he was---- "Come out," she said. "I hate this place; it stifles me. And you've lived here--worked here!" "I've lived here for eleven months and three days," he said. "Yes, come out." So they went out through the burning July sun, and Sybil found a sheltered spot between a larch and a laburnum. "Now," she said, throwing off her hat and curling her green, soft draperies among the long grass. "Come and sit down and tell me----" He threw himself on the grass. "Sure it won't bore you?" he asked. She took his hand and held it. He let her take it; but his hand did not hold hers. "I seem to remember," he said, "the last time I saw you--you were going away, or something. You told me I ought to do something great; and I told you--or, anyway, I thought to myself--that there was plenty of time for that. I'd always had a sort of feeling that I _could_ do something great whenever I chose to try. Well--yes, you did go away, of course; I remember perfectly--and I missed you extremely. And some one told me I looked ill; and I went to my doctor, and he sent me to a big swell, and _he_ said I'd only got about a year to live. So then I began to think." Her fingers tightened on the unresponsive hand. "And I thought: Here I've been thirty years in this world. I've the experience of twenty-eight and a half--I suppose the first little bit doesn't count. If I'd had time, I meant to write another book, just to show exactly what a man feels when he knows he's only got a year to live, and nothing done--nothing done." "I won't believe it," she said. "You don't _look_ ill; you're as lean as a greyhound, but----" "It may come any day now," he went on quietly; "but I've done something. The book--it _is_ great. They all say so; and I know it, too. But at first! Just think of gasping out your breath, and feeling that all the things you had seen and known and felt were wasted--lost--going out with you, and that you were going out like the flame of a candle, taking everything you might have done with you." "The book _is_ great," she said; "you _have_ done something." "Yes. But for those two days I stayed in my rooms in St James's Street, and I thought, and thought, and thought, and there was no one to care where I went or what I did, except a girl who was fond of me when she was little, and she had gone away and wasn't fond of me any more. Oh, Sybil--I feel like a lunatic--I mean you, of course; but you never cared. And I went to a house agent's and got the house unfurnished, and I bought the furniture--there's nothing much except what you've seen, and a bed and a bath, and some pots and kettles; and I've lived alone in that house, and I've written that book, with Death sitting beside me, jogging my elbow every time I stopped writing, and saying, 'Hurry up; I'm waiting here for you, and I shall have to take you away, and you'll have done nothing, nothing, nothing.'"