“But that is only a phase,” he persisted. “You have had terrible trials, I know, and they must have affected your outlook on life, but you are still young, and while one is young life is always worth having.” “I thought so once,” she assented. “I don't now.” “But there must be--there will be compensations,” he assured her. “I know that just now you are suffering from the reaction--after all you have gone through. The memory of that will pass.” “The memory of what I have gone through will never pass,” she answered. There was a moment's intense silence, a silence pregnant with reminiscent drama. The little room rose up before his memory--the woman's hopeless, hating eyes, the quivering thread of steel, the dead man's mocking words. He seemed at that moment to see into the recesses of her mind. Was it remorse that troubled her, he wondered? Did she lack strength to realise that in that half-hour at the inquest he had placed on record for ever his judgment of her deed? Even to think of it now was morbid. Although he would never have confessed it even to himself, there was growing daily in his mind some idea of reward. She had never thanked him--he hoped that she never would--but he had surely a right to claim some measure of her thoughts, some light place in her life. “Please look at me,” he begged, a little abruptly. She turned her head in some surprise. Francis was almost handsome in the clear Spring sunlight, his face alight with animation, his deep-set grey eyes full of amused yet anxious solicitude. Even as she appreciated these things and became dimly conscious of his eager interest, her perturbation seemed to grow. “Well?” she ventured. “Do I look like a person who knew what he was talking about?” he asked. “On the whole, I should say that you did,” she admitted. “Very well, then,” he went on cheerfully, “believe me when I say that the shadow which depresses you all the time now will pass. I say this confidently,” he added, his voice softening, “because I hope to be allowed to help. Haven't you guessed that I am very glad indeed to see you again?” She came to a sudden standstill. They had just passed through Lansdowne Passage and were in the quiet end of Curzon Street. “But you must not talk to me like that!” she expostulated. “Why not?” he demanded. “We have met under strange and untoward circumstances, but are you so very different from other women?” For a single moment she seemed infinitely more human, startled, a little nervous, exquisitely sympathetic to an amazing and unexpected impression. She seemed to look with glad but terrified eyes towards the vision of possible things--and then to realise that it was but a trick of the fancy and to come shivering back to the world of actualities.