iting--" He took Elwyn's consent for granted, and quickly the two men
walked up the stairs of the high house, on and on and on.

"It's a good way up," whispered Bellair, "but Fanny was told that a
child's nursery couldn't be too high. So we had the four rooms at the
top thrown into two."

They were now on the dimly-lighted landing. "Wait one moment--wait one
moment, Hugo." Bellair's voice had dropped to a low, gruff whisper.

Elwyn remained alone. He could hear slight movements going on in the
room into which Bellair had just gone; and then there also fell on his
ears the deep, regular sound of snoring. Who could be asleep in the
house at such a moment? The sound disturbed him; it seemed to add a
touch of grotesque horror to the situation.

Suddenly the handle of the door in front of him moved round, and he
heard Fanny Bellair's voice, unnaturally controlled and calm. "I sent
Nanna to bed, Jim. The poor old creature was absolutely worn out. And
then I would so much rather be alone when Sir Joseph brings back the
other doctor. He admits--I mean Sir Joseph does--that to-night _is_ the
crisis."

The door swung widely open, and Elwyn, moving instinctively back,
visualized the scene before him very distinctly.

There was a screen on the right hand, a screen covered, as had been the
one in his own nursery, with a patchwork of pictures varnished over.

Mrs. Bellair stood between the screen and the pale blue wall. Her slim
figure was clad in some sort of long white garment, and over it she wore
an apron, which he noticed was far too large for her. Her hair, the
auburn hair which had been her greatest beauty, and which he had once
loved to praise and to caress, was fastened back, massed up in as small
a compass as possible. That, and the fact that her face was
expressionless, so altered her in Elwyn's eyes as to give him an uncanny
feeling that the woman before him was not the woman he had known, had
loved, had left,--but a stranger, only bound to him by the slender link
of a common humanity.

She waited some moments as if listening, then she came out on to the
landing, and shut the door behind her very softly.

The sentence of conventional sympathy half formed on Elwyn's lips died
into nothingness; as little could he have offered words of cheer to one
who was being tortured; but in the dim light their hands met and clasped
tightly.

"Hugo?" she said, "I want to ask you something. You told Jim just now
that you were