But though the secret Echo carried shut within her breast thus grew less painful with the passage of time, another dread was slowly drawing out of her heart its warmth and glow. This was the deeper hurt of Harry Sevier's absence. Going about her daily affairs she thought of him without ceasing. She never drove through the streets that her gaze did not search the busy pavements--never passed the building that held his office that her eyes did not lift fearfully to its blank and blinded windows--never heard the postman's brisk step on the porch that her heart did not beat chokingly. Where had he gone? Chilly knew of no one who had received a letter from him. Aunt Judy, his cook, was as ignorant as she. She had even interviewed Suzuki, but it had been plain that the Japanese could tell nothing. The recollection of the bottle and the overturned glass she had seen in his office recurred to her again and again, with all their bitter suggestions of surrender, relapse and demoralisation. Could it be that he had thrown away his hard-earned victory, hurled himself again into the pit from which he had so painfully climbed, which now might hold him forever? And coupled with this sickening thought came the reflection: what if Harry should die, far away somewhere, perhaps in some foreign country, without seeing her again, without ever knowing? There were hours, too, when, woman-like, she wondered whether he had cared so much: whether he had not found comfort in absence and given his love elsewhere. Her cheeks grew paler day by day, and in spite of herself her step lagged and lassitude grew upon her. Often she felt her father's anxious look and knew that her mother, in her stately and undemonstrative way was deeply disturbed. She took without protest the tonics Doctor Southall prescribed, but they brought little betterment, and, as physicians will, he at length began to talk of a sea-trip. In her growing apathy plans of this sort meant nothing to Echo, but she believed Harry had gone abroad, and the chance that they might meet, however slender it might be, called to her. When Mrs. Spottiswoode, therefore, announced her annual migration to Paris for her winter's wardrobe, it was arranged that Echo should make the voyage under her chaperonage. Meanwhile the date had arrived for Echo's usual summer's visit to Nancy Langham in the neighbouring capital. Ordinarily a stay at the home of the girl of whom she was so fond, would have been something to look forward to with unmixed delight. Now, however, it had become a thing to shrink from. To walk those streets--perhaps to see again the house whose very memory had been such an anguish to her--she would gladly have evaded this. But when Nancy's letters promised to pass from pleading to epistolary tears, she at length yielded and late August found her the Langhams' guest for a final weekend.