The charming voice, vibrant with that tender, indescribable inflection which a woman's voice holds only for the one beloved man, floated down to him, and instinctively he looked up. For an instant his glance lingered, and ever afterwards there remained stamped indelibly upon his memory the impression of her as she leaned there like the Blessed Damozel leaning "out from the gold bar of Heaven." The sun glinted on her hair, turning it into a nimbus of ruddy gold, and there was something delicately flower-like in the droop of her small bent head on its slender throat. It reminded him of a harebell. His expression hardened as he fought down the tide of longing which surged up within him at the sight of her, and from some disused corner of his subconscious mind the lines of the old Persian Tentmaker seemed to leap out at him and mock him: "Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire." The vision which had been his was shattered, utterly destroyed--destined to be forever unfulfilled. ... But Ann remained joyfully oblivious of anything amiss. "Walk straight in," she called through the window. "I'm coming down." And with a gay wave of her hand she withdrew into the room. Followed a light sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a minute later the door of the living-room flew open to admit her. Eliot, who had been standing with his back to the room, staring out of the window, wheeled round as she came towards him with hurrying feet and thrust her eager hands into his. "You've come at last! I thought you'd be here the minute after breakfast," she began, her face breaking into smiles. "If you were a story-book hero you would have been!... Oh, I know you'll say it was business that kept you. But that's only an old married man's excuse"--mirthfully. "I shan't allow you to offer it to me until we've been married for years and years!" Thus far she had run on gaily with her tender nonsense, but now she checked herself suddenly as she read no answering smile on his face and felt her hands lie flaccidly ungripped in his. "Eliot"--she drew back a little--"why don't you speak? What is it?" Her hands clutched his spasmodically, and a sudden frightened look blurred the radiance in her eyes. "Oh, my dear! What is it? Have you had bad news?" Very slowly, but with a strange, deliberate significance, he freed his hands from her clasp and put her away from him. "Yes," he said quietly, "I've had--news." At the frozen calmness of his tones she shrank back as one shrinks from the numbing cold of the still air that hangs above black ice. "What is it?" she breathed. "Not bad news--for us?"