The next morning by the same post that St. John got his letter, Jill received her doctor's account which was considerably heavier than she had expected. It is an expensive luxury being ill. She sighed as she looked at the bill, and wondered where the money was coming from. She had not got it just then that was certain; the settlement must be deferred for a while. How hard it was to want to pay and not be able to do so! Later in the morning as she sat huddled up near the window poring over one of the books St. John had sent--for she could not work with the thought of the morrow before her; her sense of the fitness of things had bidden her take a last holiday and give herself up thoroughly to the enjoyment of the present--her attention was diverted from the novel by the sound of a footstep on the stairs, a heavy, uncertain, unmistakably masculine step which reminded her with a strange thrill of St. John's first visit when he had stumbled up those stairs in the darkness eight months ago. She waited where she was until the visitor knocked, a loud, imperative, double knock on the door with his stick, then she rose, laid aside her book, and slowly crossed the room. Outside on the narrow landing stood an elderly man, tall and gaunt, with shoulders slightly bent, and iron grey hair and beard. He eyed Jill uncertainly, very much as St. John had done, and, also like St. John, concluded that she must be a pupil; she looked so very childish, much more like a child, indeed, than had the lanky, short-frocked, girl-student who had studied there so brief a time. "I wish to speak with Miss Erskine," he said. And Jill, in vague foreboding, and with a dull repetition of her information on that former occasion, answered quietly,-- "I am Miss Erskine." "Good God!" exclaimed her visitor, and without waiting for an invitation he strode past her into the studio. Jill followed him wondering, and standing opposite to him, watched him closely, waiting for more. "My name is St. John," he said--the bomb had fallen. "My son--h'm!-- studies art here." He looked round superciliously as though he wondered how anyone could study anything in so mean a place; no doubt he considered that his son's explanation had been merely a plausible excuse. "Yes," Jill answered, and that was all.