to convey
to him. For Beattie's only half-revealed face had looked eloquent in the
firelight, eloquent of a sympathy and even of a sorrow she had said very
little about. Whenever Dion had begun to feel slightly chilled he had
looked at her, and the face in the firelight had assured him. "Beattie
does care," he had thought; and he had realized how much he wanted
Beattie to care, how he had come to depend upon Beattie's sisterly
affection and gentle but deep interest in all the course of his life.

Quickly, too quickly, the moment had come for him to say the last word
to Beattie, and suddenly he had felt shy. It had seemed to him that
something in Beattie--he could not have said what--had brought about
this unusual sensation in him. He had got up abruptly with a "Well, I
suppose I must be off now!" and had thrust out his hand. He had felt
that his manner and action were almost awkward and hard. Beattie had got
up too in a way that looked listless.

"Are you well, Beattie?" he had asked.

"Quite well."

"Perhaps you are tired?"

"No."

"I fancied--well, good-by, Beattie."

"Good-by, Dion."

That had been all. At the door he had looked round, and had seen Beattie
standing with her back to him and her face to the firelight, stooping
slightly, and he had felt a strong impulse to go to her again, and
to--he hardly knew what--to say good-by again, perhaps, in a different,
more affectionate or more tender way. But he had not done it. Instead he
had gone out and had shut the door behind him very quietly. It was odd
that Beattie had not even looked after him. Surely people generally did
that when a friend was going away, perhaps for ever. But Beattie was
different from other people, and somehow he was quite sure she cared.

The three last good-bys had been said to his mother, Robin and Rosamund,
in Queen Anne's Mansions and Little Market Street. He had stayed with
his mother for nearly two hours. She had a very bad cold, unbecoming,
complicated with fits of sneezing, a cold in the "three handkerchiefs an
hour" stage. And this commonplace malady had made him feel very tender
about her, and oddly pitiful about all humanity, including, of course,
himself. While they talked he had thought several times, "It's hard to
see mother in such a state when perhaps I shall never see her again. I
don't want to remember her with a cold." And the thought, "I shan't be
here to see her get well," had pained him acutely.

"I'm looking a