Agnes listened to her, as the doctor listens to the prattle of the patient who, he knows, will not be alive at the end of the week. She listened to her, making her own remarks from time to time as usual, but, even when she and Clare were left alone together, alluding in no way to the fact that they had had a conversation in the afternoon on the subject of Mr. Westwood. The next day Claude appeared at The Knoll. He did not go through the hall into the studio. He thought it only polite to turn into the drawingroom, where the butler said Miss Mowbray was to be found. She had scarcely shaken hands with him before he said: “Clare has told you all, I suppose?” “She told me that you had confessed to her what you confessed to me,” said Agnes. “What I confessed to you?” he repeated in a somewhat startled tone. “What I confessed--long ago?” “Well, that is not just what I meant to say,” replied Agnes. “You confessed to me a few days ago that you had fallen in love with her. But curiously enough, the way you took me up serves to lead in the same direction. Only you were, of course, a different person altogether in those days: we change every seven years, don't we?” “I am the luckiest man alive!” said he, ignoring her disagreeable reminiscence. “I am no longer young and my adventures have told on me, and yet--I am sure you told her that you considered me the luckiest man living!” “I told her that if she wished to be happy she should put an ocean between you and herself.” His voice was full of reproach--a kind of grieved reproach, as he said: “You told her that? Why should you tell her that? Is it because of the past--that foolish past of a boy and girl”-- “No: I was not thinking of the past; it was of the future I was thinking,” she said. “The future?” “Yes; and that is what I am thinking of now when I implore of you to leave her--to leave your book--everything--and fly to the uttermost ends of the earth to escape the blow which is about to fall upon you.” “I am sorry that I cannot see my way to take your advice,” said he. “I do not share your fears for the future. But whatever Fate may have in store for me, of one thing I am assured: the hardest blow will seem as the falling of a feather when she is beside me. I am sorry that you, my oldest friend--But I am sure that later on you will change your views. No one knows better than I do that such a girl as she might reasonably expect to have a younger man at her feet; but I think I know myself, and I am sure that I shall be to her a sympathetic husband.” He had gone to the door while he was speaking. “You will wish that you had never seen her,” said Agnes. “Will you force me to wish that I had never seen you?” he said, in a low voice. He had not yet lost the tone of reproach which he conceived to be appropriate to the conversation that had originated with her.