Fried chicken and sweet potatoes, beaten biscuit and fragrant coffee, had a flavour all their own to Burns that night. He ate as a hungry man should, yet never forgot his companion for a moment or allowed her to imagine that he forgot her. And by and by the meal was over and the two rose from the table. “I must go and see that Auntie is comfortable for the night, if you will excuse me for half an hour,” said the person he had come to see. “Will you wait in the drawing-room? I will have Sam bring you some late magazines.” “I'll wait, and no magazines, thank you. I can fill the time somehow,” he answered. “But don't let it be more than the half-hour, will you?” He watched her until she disappeared from his sight at the turn of the staircase landing, then went in to pace up and down the long room, his left arm folded over his right, after the fashion he had acquired since the right arm became useless. After what seemed an interminable interval she came back. He met her at the door. “Are the duties all done?” he inquired. “All done for the present. I must look in on Auntie by and by, but I think she is going to sleep.” “May she sleep the sleep of the just! And there's nothing more you feel it incumbent upon you to do for me? No more sending me to my room, no more waiting upon me by Sam, no more feeding me till my capacity is reached? Is there really no notion in your mind as to how you can put off the coming hour?” His voice had its old, whimsical inflection, but there was a deeper note in it, too. She parried him gently, yet not quite so composedly as was her wont. “Why should I want to put if off? Aren't we going to sit down and have a delightful talk? I want to hear all about Bob and Martha and all of them, and about your work since I saw you.” “You want to hear all about those things, do you? I had the impression that we discussed them quite thoroughly while I was at supper. Still, I can go over them all again if you insist. It may take up another five minutes, and when one is fencing for time, even five minutes counts.” It was his old way, with a vengeance. There was a saying of Arthur Chester's current among his and Burns's friends that it never was of any use to try to evade Red Pepper when once he had begun to fire upon your defenses. With his eyes searching you and his insolent tongue putting point blank questions to you, you might as well capitulate first as last. There being no conceivable answer to this thrust about fencing for time, even for a woman experienced in replying skilfully to men under all sorts of conditions, Ellen Lessing was forced to look up or play the part of a shy girl. So she looked up, lifting her head bravely. There really was nothing else to do. It was all in his face. He had not come all those hundreds of miles to pay her an evening call, nor did he mean to be put off longer. His eyes held hers: she could not withdraw them.