!"

Stanistreet went in.

Tyson looked back; he saw him stop half-way from the threshold.

It was only for a second, but to Stanistreet it seemed eternity. From all
eternity Mrs. Nevill Tyson had been lying there on that couch, against
those scarlet cushions, with the blinds up and the sun shining full on
her small, scarred face, and on her shrunken, tortured throat.

She held out her hand and said, "I thought it was you. I wanted to see
you. Can you find a chair?"

He murmured something absolutely trivial and sat down by her couch,
playing with the fringe of the shawl that covered her.

"Did I hear you say you had been ill?" she asked.

He leant forward, bending his head low over the fringe; she could not see
his face. "I had inflammation of something or other, and I went partially
off my head--got out of bed and walked about in an east wind with a
temperature of a hundred and two, decimal point nine."

"Oh, Louis, how wicked of you! You might have died!"

"No such luck."

"For shame! I've been ill too; did you know? Of course you didn't, or
else you'd have come to ask how I was, wouldn't you? No, you wouldn't.
How could you come when you were ill?"

"I would have come. I didn't know."

"Didn't you? Oh, well--we had a fire here, and I was burnt; that's all.
How funny you not knowing, though. It was in all the papers--'Heroic
conduct of a lady.' Aren't they silly, those people that write papers.
I wasn't heroic a bit."

"I--I never saw it. I was in Paris."

"In Paris? Ah, I love Paris! That's where I went for my honeymoon. Was
that where you were ill?"

"Yes."

"Poor Louis! And I was so happy there."

Poor Louis!--she had loved Nevill in him and he was still a part of
Nevill. And for the rest, she who understood so much, who was she to
judge him?

He looked at her. By this time his sensations had lost the sting of
pity and horror. He could look without flinching. The fire had only burnt
the lower frame-work of the face, leaving the features untouched; the
eyes still glowed under their scorched brows with a look half-tender,
half-triumphant.

It was as if they said, "See what it was you loved so much."

The little fool, tortured into wisdom, was that what she meant? It was
always hard to fathom her meanings. Could it be that?

Yes, it must be. She had sent for him, not because she wanted to see
him, but because she wanted him to see her. She had sent for him to save
him. The sight of her face