There were books on Pamela's shelves that made his hair stand on end. He groaned as he read the titles, and he had cold shivers down his back. To think they should be twins! Oh, Nature had made a great mistake! He was still reading the titles on the backs of Pamela's naughty black books, and cold shivers were running down his spine, when the door opened and a girl came in. He looked up, with mild reproof in his eyes, expecting to see Pamela; but it was not his sister, it was Lucy. Lucy had not come into Pamela Gwatkin's room by choice. She had been sent with a message from one of the Dons, and she had come under protest. She forgot all about the message when she saw Eric. 'You here?' she said. There was no reason why he shouldn't be here, in his sister's room. She had just received that letter from Wyatt Edgell, and she was wondering how she should answer it, and the sight of Eric seemed to bring a feeling of relief to her mind. 'Oh, I have been wanting to see you so much!' she said eagerly; she was so afraid Pamela would come in and interrupt them. 'I want to know--how--how Mr. Edgell is going on--if--if anything has happened since----' Eric understood what she meant, though she spoke incoherently; and he understood her agitation and reluctance. 'No,' he said slowly, looking at her with a strange pity in his eyes, 'nothing has happened in that way, thank God! He is working hard; I am afraid too hard.' 'Oh, I don't think work will hurt him!' she said scornfully. She remembered how the girls worked here. What the men called 'work' was only play to them. She wasn't at all afraid that her lover would work as hard as Pamela, for instance. 'I don't mean that,' he said; 'I'm not afraid of his breaking down. I'm only afraid that when the strain is over--he--he will feel it--he----' He was a very awkward young man; he could only stand there stammering and stuttering, while the girl looked at him with dilating eyes. 'You mean,' she said with a shiver, 'that when the strain is over he will go back to his old way--that he will not be able to withstand----' She could not finish the sentence; there was a strange sinking at her heart--a dreadful unutterable loathing and sickness that she could not overcome--and she sank down white and trembling in a chair and covered her face with her hands. The sight of Eric had brought back that awful scene, and she was thinking of that gap in his throat; she could never get it out of her mind. 'No, no, by heaven! not that!' he said almost fiercely. 'He will never, never fall away again in that way, please God; but it is you alone that can keep him. His salvation--heaven forgive me for saying it!--is in your hands.' 'My hands?' Lucy repeated feebly. 'Yes,' he said gravely, almost sternly, 'in your hands. Your love can hold him when nothing else can; it is to him a strong tower against the face of this enemy. You must not fail him in his need.'