. I am years older than you are, and it is
utterly unsuitable. You must forget it. You must indeed. There! Let us be
friends! I like you well enough for that."

He uttered a laugh that sounded as though it covered a groan. "Yes,
you're awfully good to me," he said. "But you're not--in one
sense--anything approaching my age, and pray Heaven you never will be!"

He raised his head and looked at her. "And you're not angry with me?" he
said, half wistfully.

No, she was not angry. She could not even pretend to be. "But please be
sensible!" she begged. "I know it was partly my fault. If I hadn't been
so tired, it wouldn't have happened."

He got to his feet, still holding her hands. "No; you're not to blame
yourself," he said. "What has happened was bound to happen, right from
the very beginning. But I'm sorry if it has upset you. There is no reason
why it should that I can see. You are better now?"

He helped her gently to rise. They stood face to face in the dim
candlelight, and his eyes looked into hers with such friendly concern
that again she had it not in her heart to be other than kind.

"I am quite well," she assured him. "Please forget my foolishness! Tell
me what it was you played just now!"

"That last thing?" he said. "Surely you know that! It was Handel's
_Largo_."

She started. "Of course! I remember now! But--I've never heard it played
like that before."

A very strange smile crossed his face. "No one but you would have
understood," he said. "I wanted you to hear it--like that."

She withdrew her hands from his. Something in his words sent a curious
feeling that was almost dread through her heart.

"I don't--quite--know what you mean," she said.

"Don't you?" said Piers, and in his voice there rang a note of
recklessness. "It's a difficult thing to put into words, isn't it? I just
wanted you to see the Open Heaven as I have seen it--and as I shall never
see it again."

"Piers!" she said.

He answered her almost fiercely. "No, you won't understand. Of course you
can't understand. You will never stand hammering at the bars, breaking
your heart in the dark. Wasn't that the sort of picture our kindly parson
drew for us on Sunday? It's a pretty theme--the tortures of the damned!"

"My dear Piers!" Avery spoke quickly and vehemently. "Surely you have too
much sense to take such a discourse as that seriously! I longed to tell
the children not to listen. It is wicked--wicked--to try to spread
spirit