He looked back at her once as he went down the stair. She held herself still until he was out of hearing. Then, on tiptoe, she stole down the hall to the door, and hesitated with beating heart. There was nothing in the world she so dreaded, nothing she so much wanted, as to see Longacre, to hear his voice. She slipped into the room, expecting to find it somehow extraordinarily changed, revolutionized. There was a change. It was in the man who lay upon the bed. He lay, eyes closed, face quiet. But, ah, asleep! The strong structure of the face came out startling in its emaciation. She looked at that face, dwelt upon it, saw in the salient lines something she had been seeking since she had known it. Dared she think this had come through her—the last thing she had given him! She waited to see those obstinate lids unclose. She had come so lightly he had not heard her. She would not for the world have spoken, but if she looked at him—he _must_ know she was looking at him! Then, as he lay so still, not a muscle of the sensitive mouth moving, breathing lightly, regularly, it came upon her that he wished her to suppose him asleep. A faint, cold breath ran in the nerves of her body. She turned her head quickly away, as though, through their closed lids, his waking eyes could spy on her. She had thought, child-blind, not of friendship, not of recognition for what she had spent, but of just that last bitter-sweet confidence when he would tell her, show her without words, perhaps, how much this new happiness would be to him. And he hid it from her! Well, he was right. How impossible anything else was! There were barriers of gratitude—yes, and higher yet than those—barriers she herself had reared between them! She stood, hands limply dropped, head bent. She saw shadows of jessamine leaves moving like fine, gray fingers on the sunny floor. She had no more right in that room than the veriest stranger. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV THE QUEEN’S COURTESY THE cart drew up at the station with a bounce. Before it had fairly stopped, a large man in the clothes of a working citizen, with the umbrella and bag of a traveler, sprang out and made a rush for the door of the ticket-office. A lean, brown fellow in riding-trousers, who was dawdling on the platform, stared and laughed. “Holden, what’s the rush?” “Good Lord, have I missed it?” gasped the other. “The train?” Thair yawned. “Twenty minutes early.” “They told me I’d barely make it!” Holden stared resentfully at the vacant rails. “H’m. Del Monte,” Thair smiled. “Even the clocks are fast!” He squinted at the sky, soft sapphire-blue. “Why go up to-day? Wait over, and I’ll show you a bit of a cross-country run.” “Thanks,” grunted Holden; “I’ve had my money’s worth.” The grunt ended in a grin. Thair chuckled. “Well,” Holden demanded impatiently, “how is it over at the house?”