"I am quite ready," said Anthony, getting up hastily. He dreaded the interview fully as much as the doctor had divined, and the force with which he compelled himself to meet it produced a certain hardness which, to a shallow observer, might appear like cold indifference: certainly there were hard-set lines on his face as he stood at a window waiting for Winifred. Trees, with iron railings before them, were planted in the space in front of Dr Fletcher's house; there were crimson berries on the thorn-trees, a robin or two hopping about familiarly, a grey rainy-looking sky, and now and then a warning drop on the pavement below. Winifred did not come at once, for it was difficult for her to leave Bessie, who was overwrought as much with terror as sorrow; and Anthony, having strung himself up to the meeting, lost himself again in thoughts which grew out of but did not absolutely belong to it, and did not hear her behind him when at last she entered the room. When he turned round she was standing close by him, and put out her hand. "I thought you would come," she said simply. But she saw in a moment that it was she who must be the comforter, and went on without leaving a pause which should oblige him to speak. "It was all so calm and so peaceful that I cannot realise anything beyond the comfort of knowing that he had no suffering to endure. Poor Bessie's grief seems something for which I am very sorry, but in which I have no share. It must be as I have read and never quite believed, that a great shock deadens all one's perceptions." "Yes, indeed," said Anthony, relieved by her quietness and the simple words which had nothing constrained about them. "And by and by you will be thankful that you were with him,--so close at hand--" "O, I am thankful now!" said Winifred, with intense earnestness. "It does not seem as if one could have borne it to be otherwise; but now I have all the last looks,--the knowledge that there was nothing lost. You can think what that must be."