ends. But to hers--he is as you see him. It's a good
thing for me I'm her friend, or he wouldn't let me sit here and pour
out tea for you."

He thought over the speech. It admitted an encouraging interpretation.
But Miss Palliser may have been more consoling than she had meant.

She rattled on in the kindness of her heart. He was grateful for her
presence; it calmed his agitation and prepared him to meet Lucia with
composure when she came. But Lucia did not come; and he began to have
a horrible fear that at the last moment she would fail him. He refused
the second cup that Kitty pressed on him, and she looked at him
compassionately again. He was so used to his appearance that he had
forgotten how it might strike other people. He was conscious only of
Kitty's efforts to fill up agreeably these moments of suspense.

At last it ended. Lucia was in the doorway. At the sight of her his
body shook and the strength in his limbs seemed to dissolve and flow
downwards to the floor. His eyes never left her as she came to him
with her rhythmic unembarrassed motion. She greeted him as if they had
met the other day; but as she took his hand she looked down at it,
startled by its slenderness. He was glad that she seated herself on
his right, for he felt that the violence of his heart must be audible
through his emaciated ribs.

Kitty made some trivial remark, and Lucia turned to her as if her
whole soul hung upon Kitty's words. Her absorption gave him time to
recover himself. (It did not occur to him that that was what she had
turned away for.) Her turning enabled him to look at her. He noticed
that she seemed in better health than when he had seen her last, and
that in sign of it her beauty was stronger, more vivid and more
defined.

They said little to each other. But when Kitty had left them they drew
in their chairs to the hearth with something of the glad consent of
those for whom the long-desired moment has arrived. He felt that old
sense of annihilated time, of return to a state that had never really
lapsed; and it struck him that she, too, had that feeling. It was she
who spoke first.

"Before you begin your business, tell me about yourself."

"There isn't anything to tell."

She looked as if she rather doubted the truth of that statement.

"If you don't mind, I'd rather begin about the business and get it
over."

"Why, is it--is it at all unpleasant?"

He smiled. "Not in the least, not in the very least. It's ab