They had chosen that room because there was some one watching their every movement and they had had only a few moments. The child--for surely she could not be more--had almost driven her companion into that two minutes' conversation, and Harkness could realise how desperate she must have been to have taken such a course. But after all it _was_ no business of his! Girls married every day men whom they did not love and, although apparently in this case, the man also did not love her and they were both of them in evil plight, still that too had happened before and nothing very terrible had come of it. It _was_ no business of his, and yet he did wish, all the same, that he could get the ring of the girl's voice out of his ears. He had never been able to bear the sight, sound or even inference of any sort of cruelty to helpless humans or to animals. Perhaps because he was so frantic a coward himself about physical pain! And yet not altogether that. He had on several occasions taken risks of pretty savage pain to himself in order to save a horse a beating or a dog a kicking. Nevertheless, those had been spontaneous emotions roused at the instant; there was something lingering, a sad and tragic echo, in the voice that was still with him. The very pathos of the room that he was in--the lingering of so many old notes that had been rung and rung again, notes of anticipation, triumph, disappointment, resignation, made this fresh, living sound the harder to escape. By Jupiter, the child _was_ frightened--that was the final ringing of it upon Harkness's heart and soul. But he was going to have his life sufficiently full were he to step in and rescue every girl frightened by matrimony! Rescue! No, there was no question of rescue. It wasn't, once again, his affair. But he did wish that he could just take her hand and tell her not to worry, that it would all come right in the end. But would it? He hadn't at all cared for the fragment of countenance that fellow had shown to him, and he had liked still less the tone of his voice, cold, unfeeling, hard. Poor child! And suddenly the thought of his Browning's "Duchess" came to him: I was the man the Duke spoke to: I helped the Duchess to cast off his yoke too; So, here's the tale from beginning to end, My friend! Well, here was a tale with which he had definitely nothing to do. Let him remember that. He was here in a most beautiful place for a holiday--that was his purpose, that his intention--what were these people to him or he to them? Nevertheless the voice lingered in his ear, and to be rid of it he left the room. He stepped carefully down the wooden steps, and then at the bottom of them, under the dark lee of the gallery, he paused. He was so foolishly frightened that he could not move a step. He waited. At last he whispered "Is any one there?" There was no answer. He pushed his way then out of the shadow, his heart drumming against his shirt. There was no one there. Of course there was not.