“Dinner is served, my lady,” announced a deferential voice. She laughed. “I suppose one _must_ eat,” she said; and his common sense wondered why she said it, and why the same thought, unspoken, had been in his own mind. She laid her hand within his arm, and they moved slowly down the room together. Walking so with her, he noted that she was slightly taller than he. She leaned on him. He felt vividly alive. Where was his shell—his shell of morbid reserve, in which he had hidden himself since his babyhood? He tried to ask her how it came about that she had been expecting him; but something restrained the question. He wanted to tell her all about himself, right from the beginning; all he had thought, and felt, and suffered; his shrinking from intimacy with his fellow-men; his loneliness; his shameful habit—he knew, now, that it was shameful—of looking in, unseen, at other people’s windows, his half-unconscious belief that some day he would look in, out of the darkness, and see a room which his spirit would acclaim as home; and how, to-day—at last—But he could not tell her that! Yes, he could! He could tell her anything. She would understand. And, when his confession was over, he would kneel before her—as a tired little boy might kneel at his mother’s knees at bedtime—and say his prayers. Then she would lay her hands upon his head, and Divine forgiveness and benediction would be his. They were crossing the hall. The butler stood at the dining-room door. “After dinner,” she said, “you must tell me all.” SCENE V “I HAVE WAITED SO LONG!” The round table was laid for two. “I thought——” he said. “Colin and Eva? No; their home is twelve miles from here. They were spending the afternoon with me. I live alone.” “I thought I was using your son-in-law’s room.” “No,” she said, “oh, no! That room——” she paused. “The room you used—is my husband’s dressing-room. Since I lost him, it has been kept exactly as he left it. For over thirty years it has looked, each day, just as if he had used it the day before. It did not give you the feeling of a disused apartment?” “No,” he said; “I thought——” “You thought it was Colin’s? No; Colin has never been into that room. In fact, none enter there. It is a sanctuary of mine.” Her beautiful eyes were on his face as she said the words, full of an expression which he failed to fathom. He wondered why he should have been ushered into a sanctuary forbidden to others. Yet was he not, also, prepared to admit her into the sanctuary of his inner life, to which none had ever gained admission? The presence of the old man-servant, who did not leave the room, restrained more intimate conversation. He found himself wondering what they would say when at last they were really alone. She talked of the beauty of the surrounding country; the wild hills, the heather; the pine woods, full of health-giving fragrance. He told her of his walking tours.