He felt Pouncer beside him, licking his hand. He moved on blindly. A dead stillness seemed to have fallen over everything, and the very air appeared to push him back, to bar his progress, to be like the dense and clinging weeds which thicken a stagnant pool. He stumbled on, and presently the old garden wall rose before him, and with that his pace quickened. He reached the gate and pushed it open. He found Captain Narcissus at work, clipping one of the box-trees, which was cut into the shape of a bird; but Grif did not stay long with him, for the captain told him to run on in and see Miss Nancy. Leaving Pouncer outside, he entered the house, and there a servant told him that Miss Nancy was up in her own room. He went upstairs, and as he pushed open the door he saw her seated near the window, hemming curtains; but as soon as he entered she put down her work and caught him in her arms. She did not ask him why he had not come to them for so long; she did not ask about his illness, though she was shocked at the change in his appearance; she simply accepted him as he was. After a little she took up her work again, and Grif, sitting on a stool at her feet, leaned against her knee. And presently of his own accord he told her why he had not been, or tried to tell her, for his chief explanation was that something had prevented him from coming. “I have not been very well,” he said. “But you must get quite strong before you go home,” Miss Nancy smiled. She looked down at him, as he sat gazing far away out of the window, and a dimness rose in her eyes as she stroked his hair. “Yes. I think――I think I could get well here.” The dreamy words seemed to her to have a strange meaning, and she bent a little lower. “What is it, Grif?” she asked gently. “Won’t you tell me what it is?” He tried to tell her, but the story, which had never passed his lips till then, seemed loth to pass them now. She listened, but it was not at once that she understood the meaning of his words. When it did come to her, it came in a single illuminating flash, and she saw it all from the beginning. She saw it, and she saw its horror; and what made its horror was that he himself did not, or could not, perceive it in the light of delusion. She felt an infinite compassion for him, but she said nothing, letting him finish out his tale to the end. His head leaned against her lap, and his eyes were nearly closed. She held his hand in hers, his brown thin hand, which seemed dry and fragile as a winter leaf. “But that was not Billy,” she said to him, in a low voice. “He was not like that: he never could be like that. It is some cruel falsehood which has been dropped into your mind, and grown up there.... Come with me to Billy’s room now, and I will show you his things, and tell you about him.” She got up, and, holding Grif’s hand, took him into a bright still room overlooking the garden. A robin was chirping on the window-sill, but he did not fly away when they entered.