“Not yet awhile.” O’Rane withdrew his hand to feel for a chair. I thought I saw his expression changing again, this time hardening slightly as though to keep the flash-point of her emotions low or, perhaps, to douse them with a single chilling jet. “He can get all right if he wants to. You may imagine, he’s rather bowled over at present.” As he turned to me, I felt that he wanted Barbara to hear his next announcement without being watched. “It came quite suddenly,” he told me; “and, but for this, you’d have seen him happily married to Ivy Maitland.” If Barbara gave any sign of interest, I saw and heard nothing. O’Rane took time to let his announcement sink in; and I fancied again that he was tacitly advising her to close her side of an account which Eric had already closed against her. If she chose to think that he was still in love with her and that his engagement to Ivy was an act of despair, no argument would cure her; at least there was now no reason why this shadow should force its way between us any longer. “It’s rather a facer,” O’Rane continued, “when you lose your wife and your health on the same day. I’ve been telling him all evening that no woman in the world is big enough to spoil a man’s life, but at the moment he’s in the mood to creep into a corner and die. He’s too good for that. I want you to see him before he starts, George; and write to him while he’s away.” Naturally, I promised without hesitation. If Barbara sent a letter of farewell, she said nothing to me about it; when I told her next day that I was going to Ryder Street on my way to the office, she nodded abstractedly but made no suggestion of accompanying me; and, on my return, she sat like a spirit of tragedy, refusing to ask me the result of my mission, till I volunteered to tell her. “By the way, I missed Eric this morning,” I said. “Oh? Had he gone already?,” she asked. “The maid said he was not at home,” I answered; and, mercifully for me, Barbara did not enquire further.