t
seems to me."

"It interests me. It makes me feel less lonely to know about some one
else--some one I like very much."

Francesca looked at her companion with an expression of pity. She was
lonely, too, but in a different way. The little drama of her life had
run sadly and smoothly. She was willing to give the man her friendship
if it could help him, rather because he seemed to ask for it in a mute
fashion than because she desired his.

"Lord Redin," she said, after a little pause, "do you always mean to
live in this way?"

"Alone? Yes. It is the only way I can live, at my age."

"At your age--would it make any difference if you were younger?" asked
Francesca. She dropped her voice to a low key. "You would never marry
again, even if you were much younger."

"Marry!" His shoulders moved with a sort of little start. "You do not
know what you are saying!" he added, almost under his breath, though she
heard the words distinctly.

She looked at him again, in silence, during several seconds, and she saw
how the colour sank away from his face, till the skin was like old
parchment. The hand that held the heavy stick tightened round it and
grew yellow at the knuckles.

"Forgive me," she said gently. "I am very thoughtless--it is the second
time."

He did not speak for some moments, but she understood his silence and
waited. The air was very quiet, and the enormous pillar of the dome
almost completely shut off the echo of the distant music. The low
afternoon sun streamed levelly through the great windows of the apse,
for the basilica is built towards the west. There were very few people
in the church that day. The sun made visible beams across the high
shadows overhead.

Suddenly Lord Redin spoke again. There was something weak and tremulous
in the tone of his rough voice.

"I am very much attached to you, for two reasons," he said. "We have
known each other long, but not intimately."

"That is true. Not very intimately."

Francesca did not know exactly what to say. But for his manner and for
his behaviour a few moments earlier, she might have fancied that he was
about to offer himself to her, but such an idea was very far from her
thoughts. Her woman's instinct told her that he was going to tell her
something in the nature of a confidence.

"Precisely," he continued. "We have never been intimate. The reason why
we have not been intimate is one of the reasons why I am more attached
to you than you have ever