r own sensations; and she drew over her face that armoured look
which she perhaps knew Courtier could not bear to see. His face, at all
events, was very red when he shook hands. He had come, he told Mrs.
Noel, to say good-bye. He was definitely off next week. Fighting had
broken out; the revolutionaries were greatly outnumbered. Indeed he
ought to have been there long before!

Barbara had gone over to the window; she turned suddenly, and said:

"You were preaching peace two months ago!"

Courtier bowed.

"We are not all perfectly consistent, Lady Barbara. These poor devils
have a holy cause."

Barbara held out her hand to Mrs. Noel.

"You only think their cause holy because they happen to be weak.
Good-bye, Mrs. Noel; the world is meant for the strong, isn't it!"

She intended that to hurt him; and from the tone of his voice, she knew
it had.

"Don't, Lady Barbara; from your mother, yes; not from you!"

"It's what I believe. Good-bye!" And she went out.

She had told him that she did not want him to go--not yet; and he was
going!

But no sooner had she got outside, after that strange outburst, than she
bit her lips to keep back an angry, miserable feeling. He had been rude
to her, she had been rude to him; that was the way they had said
good-bye! Then, as she emerged into the sunlight, she thought: "Oh!
well; he doesn't care, and I'm sure I don't!"

She heard a voice behind her.

"May I get you a cab?" and at once the sore feeling began to die away;
but she did not look round, only smiled, and shook her head, and made a
little room for him on the pavement.

But though they walked, they did not at first talk. There was rising
within Barbara a tantalizing devil of desire to know the feelings that
really lay behind that deferential gravity, to make him show her how much
he really cared. She kept her eyes demurely lowered, but she let the
glimmer of a smile flicker about her lips; she knew too that her cheeks
were glowing, and for that she was not sorry. Was she not to have
any--any--was he calmly to go away--without----And she thought: "He shall
say something! He shall show me, without that horrible irony of his!"

She said suddenly:

"Those two are just waiting--something will happen!"

"It is probable," was his grave answer.

She looked at him then--it pleased her to see him quiver as if that
glance had gone right into him; and she said softly:

"And I think they will be quite right."