"Young man, I think you're dying." Oh, it was cruel, cruel! Barbara's thoughts flashed from the sick room to her own happiness--flashed home. She saw the lawn at Sandmoor, and a certain tennis-player standing in the shade of the big tulip tree, as she had seen him often that summer. He was in his white flannels, he was flushed, smiling, his grey-blue eyes were shining, he swung his racquet in his hand as he talked. He was so handsome and glad and young----ah! but no younger than Reynold Harding! Suppose it had been Adrian, and not Reynold, in the chair yonder, and her happy dreams, instead of being carried forward on the full flood of prosperity, had been left stranded and wrecked, on the low, desolate shore of death. It might have been Adrian passing thus beyond recall, the sun might have been dying out of her heaven, and at the thought she turned away her head, to hide the hot tears which welled into her eyes. "You are sorry for me," said Reynold. It was true, though the tears had not been for him. "I'm sorry you are ill," she said. She got up as she spoke, and stood by the fire. "Very kind, but very useless," he answered with a smile. "Useless!" cried little Barbara. "I know it is useless! I know I can't do anything! But, Mr. Harding, we were friends once, weren't we?" He was silent. "I thought we were?" she faltered. "Friends--yes, if you like. We will say that we were--friends." "I thought we were," she repeated humbly. "I don't mean to make too much of it, but I thought we were very good friends, as people say, till that unlucky evening--that evening when you and Uncle Hayes--you were angry with me then!" "That's a long while ago." "It was my fault," she continued. "I didn't mean any harm, but you had a right to be vexed. And afterwards, that other evening when I went to you--I don't know what harm I did by forgetting your letter--you would not tell me, but I know you were angry. Afterwards, when I thought of it, I could see that you had been keeping it down all the time, you wouldn't reproach me then and there," said Barbara, with cheeks of flame, "but I understood when I looked back. It was only natural that you should be angry. It was very good of you not to say more." "I think it was," said Reynold, but so indistinctly that Barbara, though she looked questioningly at him, doubted whether she heard the words. "It would be only natural if you hated me," she went on, panting and eager, now that she had once began to speak. "But you mustn't, please, I can't bear it! I have never quarrelled with any one, never in all my life. I don't like to go away and feel that I am leaving some one behind me with whom I am not friends. So, Mr. Harding, I want you just to say that you don't hate me." "Oh, but you are making too much of all that," he replied, and then, with an invalid's abruptness, he asked, "Where's your talisman?"