he contrast of his burning hand with this frozen silence,
frightened Barbara horribly. She could think of nothing but to put her
other hand to his forehead. That too was burning hot!

"What brought you here?" he said.

She could only murmur:

"Oh! Eusty! Are you ill?"

Miltoun took hold of her wrists.

"It's all right, I've been working too hard; got a touch of fever."

"So I can feel," murmured Barbara. "You ought to be in bed. Come home
with me."

Miltoun smiled. "It's not a case for leeches."

The look of his smile, the sound of his voice, sent a shudder through
her.

"I'm not going to leave you here alone."

But Miltoun's grasp tightened on her wrists.

"My dear Babs, you will do what I tell you. Go home, hold your tongue,
and leave me to burn out in peace."

Barbara sustained that painful grip without wincing; she had regained her
calmness.

"You must come! You haven't anything here, not even a cool drink."

"My God! Barley water!"

The scorn he put into those two words was more withering than a whole
philippic against redemption by creature comforts. And feeling it dart
into her, Barbara closed her lips tight. He had dropped her wrists, and
again, begun pacing up and down; suddenly he stopped:

"'The stars, sun, moon all shrink away,
A desert vast, without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink,

"And a dark desert all around.'

"You should read your Blake, Audrey."

Barbara turned quickly, and went out frightened. She passed through the
sitting-room and corridor on to the staircase. He was ill-raving! The
fever in Miltoun's veins seemed to have stolen through the clutch of his
hands into her own veins. Her face was burning, she thought confusedly,
breathed unevenly. She felt sore, and at the same time terribly sorry;
and withal there kept rising in her the gusty memory of Harbingers kiss.

She hurried down the stairs, turned by instinct down-hill and found
herself on the Embankment. And suddenly, with her inherent power of
swift decision, she hailed a cab, and drove to the nearest telephone
office.

CHAPTER VIII

To a woman like Audrey Noel, born to be the counterpart and complement of
another,--whose occupations and effort were inherently divorced from the
continuity of any stiff and strenuous purpose of her own, the uprooting
she had voluntarily undergone was a serious matter.

Bereaved of the faces of her f