Lawford gazed quietly back into the clear, grave, deliberate eyes. ‘Suppose, suppose, just for the sake of argument—_not_,’ he suggested. She turned her head and reflected, glancing from one to the other of the pure, steady candle-flames. ‘And what was _your_ answer?’ she said, looking over her shoulder at her brother. ‘My dear child, you know what _my_ answers are like!’ ‘And yours?’ Lawford took a deep breath, gazing mutely, forlornly, into the lovely untroubled peace of her eyes, and without the least warning tears swept up into his own. With an immense effort he turned, and choking back every sound, beating back every thought, groped his way towards the square black darkness of the open door. ‘I must think, I must think,’ he managed to whisper, lifting his hand and steadying himself. He caught over his shoulder the glimpse of a curiously distorted vision, a lifted candle, and a still face gazing after him with infinitely grieved eyes, then found himself groping and stumbling down the steep, uneven staircase into the darkness of the queer old wooden and hushed and lonely house. The night air cold on his face calmed his mind. He turned and held out his hand. ‘You’ll come again?’ Herbert was saying, with a hint of anxiety, even of apology in his voice. Lawford nodded, with eyes fixed blankly on the candle, and turning once more, made his way slowly down the narrow green-bordered path upon which the stars rained a scattered light so feeble it seemed but as a haze that blurred the darkness. He pushed open the little white wicket and turned his face towards the soundless, leaf-crowned hill. He had advanced hardly a score of steps in the thick dust when almost as if its very silence had struck upon his ear he remembered the black broken grave with its sightless heads that lay beyond the leaves. And fear, vast and menacing, fear such as only children know, broke like a sea of darkness on his heart. He stopped dead—cold, helpless, trembling. And, in the silence he heard a faint cry behind him and light footsteps pursuing him. He turned again. In the thick close gloom beneath the enormous elm-boughs the grey eyes shone clearly visible in the face upturned to him. ‘My brother,’ she began breathlessly—‘the little French book. It was I who—who mislaid it.’ The set, stricken face listened unmoved. ‘You are ill. Come back! I am afraid you are very ill.’ ‘It’s not that, not that,’ Lawford muttered; ‘don’t leave me; I am alone. Don’t question me,’ he said strangely, looking down into her face, clutching her hand; ‘only understand that I can’t, I can’t go on.’ He swept a lean arm towards the unseen churchyard. ‘I am afraid.’ The cold hand clasped his closer. ‘Hush, don’t speak! Come back; come back. I am with you, a friend, you see; come back.’ Lawford clutched her hand as a blind man in sudden peril might clutch the hand of a child. He saw nothing clearly; spoke almost without understanding his words.