When the click came and his footsteps after it, she admitted further (now when it could do no harm) that she had had foreknowledge of him; she had been aware all the time that he would come. And she wondered, as she always wondered at his coming, whether really she would find him well, or whether this time it had incredibly miscarried. And her almost unbearable joy became suspense, became vehement desire to see him and gather from his face whether this time also it had worked. "How are you? How have you been?" was her question when he stood before her in her white room, holding her hand for an instant. "Tremendously fit," he answered; "ever since I last saw you." "Oh--seeing me----" It was as if she wanted him to know that seeing her made no difference. She looked at him and received her certainty. She saw him clear-eyed and young, younger than he was, his clean, bronzed face set, as it used to be, in a firmness that obliterated the lines, the little agonized lines, that had made her heart ache. "It always does me good," he said, "to see you." "And to see you--you know what it does to me." He thought he knew as he caught back his breath and looked at her, taking in again her fine whiteness, and her tenderness, her purity of line, and the secret of her eyes whose colour (if they had colour) he was never sure about; taking in all of her, from her adorable feet to her hair, vividly dark, that sprang from the white parting like--was it like waves or wings? What had once touched and moved him unspeakably in Agatha's face was the capacity it had, latent in its tragic lines, for expressing terror. Terror was what he most dreaded for her, what he had most tried to keep her from, to keep out of her face. And latterly he had not found it; or rather he had not found the unborn, lurking spirit of it there. It had gone, that little tragic droop in Agatha's face. The corners of her eyes and of her beautiful mouth were lifted; as if by--he could find no other word for the thing he meant but wings. She had a look which, if it were not of joy, was of something more vivid and positive than peace. He put it down to their increased and undisturbed communion made possible by her retirement to Sarratt End. Yet as he looked at her he sighed again. In response to his sigh she asked suddenly, "How's Bella?" His face lighted wonderfully. "It's extraordinary," he said; "she's better. Miles better. In fact, if it was not tempting Providence, I should say she was well. She's been, for the last week anyhow, a perfect angel." His amazed, uncomprehending look gave her the clue to what had happened. It was another instance of the astounding and mysterious way it worked. She must have got at Bella somehow in getting at him. She saw now no end to the possibilities of the thing. There wasn't anything so wonderful in making him what, after all, he was; but if she, Bella, had been, even for a week, a perfect angel, it had made her what she was not and never had been.