He shook his head. "They've lost something. Though I admit most of the women you mean, never had the thing I mean." I said I didn't understand. "Well, you ought to. You've got it." He looked at me with an odd expression and asked how long I'd had this notion in my head. I said a year. "All this time! You've been full of this ever since I was here last!" I lied. I said I had thought of absolutely nothing else all that time. He stood up ... but I still sat there wondering what had made me tell him that lie. "You won't go," I said, "without seeing my mother." To-day--he hadn't time. I went down with him as usual to the front door, weeping inwardly, yet hoping, praying, that before the door closed he would say something that would help--something kind. He often said the best things of all just as he was going--as though he had not dared to be half so interesting, or a tenth so kind, but in the very act of making his escape. To-day he put on his covert coat in a moody silence. Still silent, he took his hat. I stood with the door-knob in my hand. "You think, then, even if Aunt Josephine helped----" "Who is Aunt Josephine?" "My father's step-sister. She is well off." Aunt Josephine's riches made no impression upon him. He was going away a different man from the one who had come in and pushed away my papers, to sit beside me and to take my hand. He pulled his stick out of the umbrella-stand. "You feel sure I couldn't?" I pleaded at the door. "I feel sure you could do something better." He was out on the step. "Good-bye," he said, with the look that hurt me, so tired--disappointed. He had come for peace--for my mother's tranquil spirit to bring rest to his tired mind. And all he had found here was my mother's daughter fretting to be out in the fray! I had not even listened. I had interrupted and pulled away my hand. After I shut the door, I opened it again, and called out: "Oh, what was it you were going to tell me?" "It wouldn't interest you," he said, without even turning round. CHAPTER XVI THE YACHTING PARTY I had to make use of Eric's old plea, "pressure of work," to account for his going away without seeing my mother. I watched the clock that next afternoon in a state of fever. Would he come again at three, so that we might talk alone? No. The torturing minute-hand felt its way slowly round the clock-face, its finger, like a surgeon's on my heart, pressing steadily, for all my flinching, to verify the seat and the extent of pain. Four o'clock. Five. Half-past. No hope now of his coming, I told myself, as those do who cannot give up hope. My mother questioned me. What had Mr. Annan said the day before? Had he, then, come so early for "nothing in particular"? I said that I supposed he had come early because he found he could not come late.