"Ah, quite so. She bears up, she bears up. Well, that is what we must all try to do--to bear up. It is the only thing." "Yes," said Barbara. She was not quite sure that she ought to have said that her mother seemed very well. "Of course it is a trying time," she added, by way of softening the possibly indiscreet admission. "Certainly, certainly--very trying for you both," Mr. Pryor agreed. Yet even to his dull eyes it was apparent that this very trying time had not dimmed the bright face opposite. There was a peculiar radiance and warmth of youth about Barbara that afternoon, a glow of life which forced itself on his perception. She did not smile, she was very quiet, and yet it seemed as if some new delight, some unspoken hope, had awakened within her, quickening and kindling her to the very finger-tips. She sat demurely in her low chair, with her face turned towards the window, but there was a soft flame of colour on her cheek, and a light in her eyes when she lifted her drooping lashes. In that great, cold house, through which the shadow of death was creeping, she was the incarnation of life and promise, a curious contrast to her surroundings. It would hardly have seemed stranger if suddenly, in the desolate world without, one had come on a burning bush of pomegranate flowers among the cold frost-blossoms of the Mitchelhurst hedges. Mr. Pryor felt something of all this. He did not quite like it. Of course he did not want to see the girl haggard and weary, but he was so chilly, as he sat there by the fireside with his book on his knee, that it seemed to him as if the swift, light pulsations of youth were hardly proper. He would have been more at his ease with Barbara if she had had a slight toothache, or a cold in her head. He felt it his duty to depress her a little, quietly, as she sat there. "The hour of Death's approach is a very solemn one, even for the bystanders," Mr. Pryor began, after a moment's consideration. Barbara said, "Yes it was," with an almost disconcerting readiness. "Yes, yes, and we should endeavour to profit by it. We should spend it, not only in regrets for those who are about to be taken from us, but in thoughts of the future." Barbara's red lips parted in another "Yes." The future--she was thinking of it. It was easier to think of it than of the old man who was dying. "Of the future," Mr. Pryor continued, caressing the smooth leather of his book with his ungloved hand, and softly pulling the pendent ribbon, "of the time when we shall be lying--yes, yes, each one of us--as our friend is now." He glanced up at the ceiling, to indicate that he meant Mr. Hayes, taking his beef-tea in the bed-room on the first floor. The girl said nothing, but looked meditatively at the folds of her dress, as if she were in church. It would have been pleasanter if Mr. Pryor had brought a funeral sermon out of his table drawer, and could have gone on without these embarrassing pauses.