"There is death in every day, danger in every hour; you must encounter the danger. The way in which you meet the danger decides your relations with death. Life is a series of compromises with death. I wish I were not going away." "So do I, indeed, William," she said earnestly. "But you must not be uneasy on my part; I am quite well, and shall keep quite well while you are away. I should be most unhappy if I thought you went away uncomfortable on my account." The tone of the girl's voice brought him back to a consciousness of the situation. His manner changed. He looked up at her and smiled. "Unhappy about you, Maud! Not I. You must not think that. I was talking generalities; I was not alluding to your case. You see, when a man has been a long time in a foreign country, where the speech of the people in the streets is unknown to him, and where, among the few people who speak European languages, there are only a couple for whose society he cares, he falls into one bad habit certainly, that of looking at all things in the abstract; and into another bad habit probably, that of muttering aloud to himself. I am afraid I have been treating you to a small example of both vices." He smiled brightly, and held out his hand to her. She took the small white hand off the ebony table and placed it in his. The brown fingers closed over the white ones, and looking down at the joined hands he said: "Like the rough brown sheath of the cocoa-nut, and the snow-white fruit within." "What?" "My hand round yours." She said nothing. He released her hand. "You will take care of that hand, Maud, while I am away? Some time someone will value that hand more than the regalia in the Tower. It will be to him above all price. He would like to set guards over it as they set guards over the royal jewels, and yet would allow no one to act as sentinel but himself." Such talk was new to her. She did not say anything. "We have grown good friends in the few days we have been meeting one another?" "Oh, yes." "The best of friends?" "The best of friends." "And all the time I am away you will never cease to think of me as your best friend?" "Never." It almost made her cry, she could not tell why, to hear him asking such a question. "And should you be in any need of aid or advice, you will let me know at once?" "At once." There was a pause during which Mrs. Grant entered the room. The baronet got up, and sitting down beside the widow, said to both the women: