Harding made a slight sign of comprehension. "Well, it wouldn't be my business to say anything now," he went on in his hoarse low voice. "Besides, there is nothing to say. If the Devil had a daughter, she couldn't make any scandal out of an afternoon call in my mother's house. She couldn't suspect you of a flirtation with a death's head. Visiting the sick--it is the very pink of propriety." Barbara felt herself continually baffled. And yet she could not accept her repulse. There was something she wanted to say to Mr. Harding, or rather, there was a word she wanted him to say to her. If he would but say it she would go, very gladly, for the walls of the room, the heavy atmosphere, and Reynold's eyes, weighed upon her like a nightmare. He had likened her once in his thoughts to a little brown-plumaged bird, and she felt like a bird that afternoon, a bird which had flown into a gloomy cage, and sat, oppressed and fascinated, with a palpitating heart. It seemed to her that his eyes had been upon her ever since she came in, and she wanted a moment's respite. It came almost as soon as the thought had crossed her mind. Reynold coughed painfully. She started to her feet, not knowing what she ought to do, but a thin hand, lifted in the air, signed to her to be still. Presently the paroxysm subsided. "Don't you want anything?" she ventured to ask. He shook his head. After a moment he opened a little box on the table at his elbow, and took out a lozenge. Barbara dared not speak again. She looked at the dull, smouldering fire. "Young man," she said to herself with great distinctness, "Young man, _I think_ you're dying." She had the saddest heartache as she thought of it. That for her there should be life, London, Paris, the South--who could tell what far-off cities and shores?--who could tell how many years with Adrian? Who could tell what beauty and sweetness and music, what laughter and tears, what dreams and wonders, what joys and sorrows in days to come? While for him, this man with whom she had built castles in the air at Mitchelhurst, there were only four drab walls, a slowly burning fire, and a square grey picture of roofs and chimneys, dim in the foggy air. That was his share of the wide earth! No ease, no love, no joy, no hope,--the mother-world which was to her so bountifully kind, kept nothing for him but a few dull wintry days. Why must this be? And he was so young! And there was so much life everywhere, the earth was full of it, full to overflowing, this busy London was a surging, tumultuous sea of life about them, where they sat in that dim hushed room. She raised her head and looked timidly at the figure opposite, pale as a spectre, half lying, half lolling in his leathern chair, while he sucked his lozenge, and gazed before him with downcast eyes. From him, at least, life had ebbed hopelessly.