They followed her down the hall and through a door into a room where on a center table burned an oil lamp with a green shade. It was a room bare of rugs, with a few pieces of blackwood furniture made by native carpenters; on the walls were some of Hoffman's religious pictures; a quantity of mats and doilies of cross-stitch and filet hung over tables and chairs, and on the top of an harmonium there were vases of paper flowers, like the needlework probably the work of the orphans. In one corner stood a splendid old Korean chest, looking almost abashed to be keeping such company. They sat down about the center table in silence. It was cold so Megan kept on her coat. She said nothing, she was absorbed in the wonder of having been so calm, of still feeling calm. Miss Reed picked up a pencil and began to follow with invisible lines the pattern of the cover. Her finger-nails were quite blue with cold. She was watching her pencil, her rather prominent pale eyes cast down; her colorless lashes, unusually long, absurdly suggested under the light the feathery antennae of an insect. Megan began to take an interest in her. She looked at her more closely and at the Doctor. She guessed that between Miss Reed and the Doctor there was an antagonism of some sort, perhaps of long standing. From the look of his set face it might be even active dislike. He sat with his arms folded across his chest and in the light of the oil lamp his head was reduced to its essential structure, almost skull-like, but it no longer suggested weakness to Megan. It was the same head only now its bareness was formidable. "What has been happening to you here?" he asked. "And why have you been so unwilling to leave?" Miss Reed might easily have felt that some reproach was due her but apparently she did not. She answered in her sweet, gentle voice: