him long," she said. She spoke quietly, authoritatively, in the
tone which a good servant does not mistake. The footman had his hand on
the drawing-room door.

"I will tell him, madam. What name, please?"

Julia trembled: she had not thought of that. "Merely say a lady," she
returned carelessly.

The footman wavered and she fancied herself lost; but at that instant
the door opened from within and John Arment stepped into the hall. He
drew back sharply as he saw her, his florid face turning sallow with
the shock; then the blood poured back to it, swelling the veins on his
temples and reddening the lobes of his thick ears.

It was long since Julia had seen him, and she was startled at the change
in his appearance. He had thickened, coarsened, settled down into
the enclosing flesh. But she noted this insensibly: her one conscious
thought was that, now she was face to face with him, she must not let
him escape till he had heard her. Every pulse in her body throbbed with
the urgency of her message.

She went up to him as he drew back. "I must speak to you," she said.

Arment hesitated, red and stammering. Julia glanced at the footman, and
her look acted as a warning. The instinctive shrinking from a "scene"
predominated over every other impulse, and Arment said slowly: "Will you
come this way?"

He followed her into the drawing-room and closed the door. Julia, as she
advanced, was vaguely aware that the room at least was unchanged: time
had not mitigated its horrors. The contadina still lurched from the
chimney-breast, and the Greek slave obstructed the threshold of the
inner room. The place was alive with memories: they started out from
every fold of the yellow satin curtains and glided between the angles of
the rosewood furniture. But while some subordinate agency was carrying
these impressions to her brain, her whole conscious effort was centred
in the act of dominating Arment's will. The fear that he would refuse
to hear her mounted like fever to her brain. She felt her purpose melt
before it, words and arguments running into each other in the heat of
her longing. For a moment her voice failed her, and she imagined herself
thrust out before she could speak; but as she was struggling for a word,
Arment pushed a chair forward, and said quietly: "You are not well."

The sound of his voice steadied her. It was neither kind nor unkind--a
voice that suspended judgment, rather, awaiting unforeseen developments.
She sup