"You will be all right?"--how soapy and mechanical that voice was. . . . "Oh, of course I shall. Don't think a _bit_ about me. Perhaps--" she hesitated for a moment and then continued with the most winning sweetness--"perhaps, Gillie darling, it will buck you up so that you won't want to . . ." The strange voice that was coming from him dried the longing, loving words in her throat. "Well, then, dear, I shall say good-bye, now. You see I shall be out most of this night, and if Tumpany and I are to catch the early train from Wordingham and have all the guns ready, we must leave here before you will be awake. I mean, you sleep into the morning a little now, don't you?" He seemed anxious as he asked. "Generally, Gillie. Then if it is to be good-bye for two days, good-bye my dear, dear husband. Come----" She held out her arms, lying there, and he had to bend into her embrace. "I shall pray for you all the time you are away," she whispered. "I shall think of my boy every minute. God bless you and preserve you, my dear husband." She was doubtless about to say more, to murmur other words of sacred wifely love, when her arms slid slowly away from him and lay motionless upon the counterpane. Immediately they did so, the man's figure straightened itself and stood upright by the side of the bed. "Well, I'll go now," he said. "Good-night, dear." He turned his full, palish face upon her, the yellow point of flame, coming through the top of the candle shade, showed it in every detail. Fixed, introspective eyes, dreamy painted smile, a suave, uninterested farewell. The door closed gently behind him. It was closed as a bland doctor closes a door. Mary lay still as death. The room was perfectly silent, save for the fall of a red coal in the fire or the tiny hiss and spurt of escaping gas in thin pencils of old gold and amethyst. Then there came a loud sound into the room. It was a steady rhythmic sound, muffled but alarming. It seemed to fill the room. In a second or two more Mary knew that it was only her heart beating. "But I am frightened," she said to herself. "I am really frightened. This is FEAR!" And Fear it was, such as this clear soul had not known. This daughter of good descent, with serene, temperate mind and body, had ever been high poised above gross and elemental fear. To her, as to the royal nature of her friend Julia Daly, God had early given a soul-guard of angels. Now, for the first time in her life, Mary knew Fear. And she knew an unnameable disgust also. Her heart drummed. The back of her throat grew hot--hotter than her fever made it. And, worse, a thousand times more chilling and dreadful, she felt as if she had just been holding something cold and evil in her arms. . . . The voice was unreal and almost incredible. The waxen mask with its set eyes and the small, fine mouth caught into a fixed smile--oh! this was not her husband!