He watched the play of its glow over her features, was struck by her bad colour. The coldly observant part of him noted the fact that she was, or had been, ill. Half-starved, too, added this detached professional self. Suffering, physical and mental, was stamped upon her face. He acquiesced in it, grimly. Her frivolous wickedness--he remembered the callously jaunty tone of the note she had left for him--had met just retribution. He wondered what had happened to the man. She looked up again, answering, with a subtle perception, the question in his mind. “He’s dead, Harry--dead years ago. Very dead. To me, he never really lived--not as you have lived, always, through every moment of my--” she paused--“my Hell.” A sentiment of pity pricked him sharply. Poor little Christine!--she had certainly paid, and paid heavily. He repressed his commiseration, in alarm at himself. He must think--think sensibly. Did she intend to come back for good? He reacted violently against the idea. It was impossible. He would be a laughing-stock, the butt for the pointing fingers, the sly allusions, of his fellows in the Courts. His pride revolted. No, no--he must get her out again somehow, before the servants knew. Once more she read his thought. “No one shall know that I have come, Harry. It’s just for this one hour and then I’ll go again. But just for this one hour--Harry!” She stretched out her arms to him. “Be generous!” He fenced stubbornly. “What, exactly, do you want, Christine?” She smiled at him, her face radiant. “I want--I want just to pretend that it all never happened. I want, just once, to sit with you by the fireside as though I had been here all these years--as though you and I had learned to be the comrades I had dreamed we should be. I want to sit with you as we should have sat, both of us now growing old, looking back on all the beautiful things of our life together. Harry!” She lifted her arms to him again, yearning out to him. “Just once--just once to pretend--to be as we might have been--and then I can go away and really and truly die, satisfied. Be generous, Harry, be generous just this once if you never are again.” An obscure feeling stirred in him, a sense of tears that threatened as he looked down into the eyes that swam with moisture. “You nearly broke my life, Christine,” he said, with a hardly achieved attempt at harshness. “I want to forget it,” she answered. “To believe--for just one hour--that I made your life, as I wanted to help make it. Oh, Harry, Harry, I love you--I have always loved you, wherever I have been and whatever I have done--and I want to believe, oh, for just such a little minute, that my love was not really in vain. I just had to come!” He pressed his hand over his eyes, did not answer. She pointed to the comrade chair by the fireside. “Harry--Harry dear--sit down and talk to me as we ought to have been able to sit and talk--old married lovers with never a cloud between us.”