urselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer
to the wicket-gate there's other company around one than you'll find
in--in the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight.
Very probably my errand may seem to have no meaning for you. You look
ill, but you don't appear to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I
feared in my--well, there--as I feared you might be. I must say, though,
it seems a terribly empty house. And no lights, too!'

She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned
her head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of the
half-open door. 'But that's not my affair.' And again she looked at him
for a little while.

Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the
knee. 'Trouble or no trouble,' she said, 'it's never too late to remind
a man of his mother. And I'm sure, Mr Lawford, I'm very glad to hear you
are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave heart,
forty or seventy, whichever we may be: "While the evil days come not nor
the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them,"
though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the bottom of
my heart, not to YOU.'

She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her
large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief, fixed,
baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a
dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech.

'And now that I've eased my conscience,' said the old lady, pulling
down her veil, 'I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the
evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr
Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must
have a very peculiar notion of mankind. Is the fly still there? I
expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if--!'

'He's there,' Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow
progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a flock of birds
scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a
whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in his mind--memories whose
import he made no effort to discover. None the less, the leisurely
descent became in their company something of a real experience even in
such a brimming week.

'I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?' he said, pushing
the old lady's silk skirts in after her as she sl