her to
him.

"I will never let you go! Never--!" His lips were on hers again, life,
with all its difficulties, was again forgotten, the rhyme of the
Fairies' Well galloped in his hot brain:

"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."

The sound of the hall door opening, and the grinding roar of a motor
engine running down, recalled them both to this troublesome world.

But in Christian's heart, whether from within or from without, a voice
had spoken, telling the kisses, one by one, as though they were the
petals of a flower. "This year, next year, sometime, never!" If the
last word had been "sometime," or "never," she knew not; she knew only
that if what before her was the way of renunciation, she would find it
a hard way to walk in.

Dr. Mangan stood, a massive presence, at the top of the stairs, and
talked massively to Lady Isabel of Dick's condition.

"Very critical--no worries--nourishment--would he have a nurse?"

To which Lady Isabel, a poor, shaken, pallid Lady Isabel, with no more
backbone than the shape of blancmange, which, it must be said, she
somewhat resembled, replied: "_Nothing_ would induce him!"

"Then I should like to have a little talk with Miss Christian," said
the Big Doctor, beginning to walk downstairs, slowly, solemnly,
solidly, like a trick-elephant at a circus.

Christian's quick ears had heard his voice on the stairs, and she met
him in the hall. Larry stood irresolute at the door of the study. His
eyes met those of the Doctor, and something during the interchange of
glances suggested that his presence was not desired. He returned to
the study and shut the door, and wished that he could have a word
alone with the Doctor, just to put him up to what to say to Christian.
He could hear the heavy rumble of the Doctor's bass voice, and the
soft alto murmur of Christian's replies. She had the Irish voice,
pitched on a low note, an instrument more apt for pathos than for
gaiety, which is, perhaps, what gives to its gaiety so special a
charm.

Larry stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, trying to
steady himself. Deep under his panic uncertainty as to the strength of
his hold on Christian, was the anger that Dick's denunciation had
roused in him, and momently, as his mind went back over the interview,
remembrance of the insults became more unendurable. Abuse from the old
to the young, and from a sick man to a sound one, cannot fail to
rankle, since it cannot be flung back.