Barbara looked over her shoulder at the closing door, and her eyes in travelling back to Harding's face took in the general aspect of the room. It was fairly large and lofty. Folding doors, painted a dull drab, divided it from what she conjectured was the sick man's bed-room. It was dull, it was negative, not particularly shabby, not uncomfortable, not vulgar, but hopelessly dreary and commonplace. There was in it no single touch of beauty or individuality on which the eye could rest. Some years earlier an upholsterer had supplied the ordinary furniture, a paper-hanger had put up an ordinary paper, and, except that time had a little dulled and faded everything, it remained as they had left it. The drab was rather more drab, that was all. "Well," said Reynold from his arm-chair, "so you have come to see me." "I wanted to ask you how you were--I heard you were ill," Barbara explained, and it struck her that she was exactly like a little parrot, saying the same thing over and over again. "Very kind of you," he replied. "Do you want me to answer?" "If--if you could say you were getting a little better." He smiled. "It looks like it, doesn't it?" he said, languidly. Barbara's eyes met his for a moment, and then she hung her head. No, it did not look like it. Two candles were burning on the chimney-piece, but the curtains had not been drawn. Between the two dim lights, yellow and grey, he sat, leaning a little sideways, with a face like the face of the dead, except for the great sombre eyes which looked out of it, and the smile which showed a glimpse of his teeth. His hand hung over the arm of his chair, the hot nerveless hand which Barbara had taken in her own a moment before. "I am so sorry," she said. "I hoped I might have had some better news of you before I went away. Did you know I was going away--going to be married?" She looked up, putting the question in a timid voice, and he answered "Yes," with a slight movement of his head and eyelids. "I wish you all happiness." "Thank you," said Barbara gratefully. "And where are you going?" "To Paris for a time, and then we shall see. He"--this with a little hesitation--"he is very busy." "Busy--what, more poems?" said the man who had done with being busy. "Yes. Did you see his volume?" Harding shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm a little past Mr. Scarlett's poetry." "Oh!" said Barbara, "of course one can't read when one is ill. You ought to rest." "Yes," he assented, "I don't seem able to manage that either, just at present, but I dare say I shall soon. Meanwhile I sit here and look at the fire." "Yes," said the girl. "Some people see all sorts of things in the fire." "So they say," he answered listlessly. "_I_ see it eating its heart out slowly. And so you are going to Paris? That was your dream when you were at Mitchelhurst."