how hard she tried--for my sake.
It's the crying that's most dangerous of all."

"Nothing could be worse," the doctor said and he went away with a grave
face, a deeply troubled man.

When Dowie went back to the Tower room she found Robin standing at a
window looking out on the moorside. She turned and spoke and Dowie saw
that intuition had told her what had been talked about.

"I will try to be good, Dowie," she said. "But it comes--it comes
because--suddenly I know all over again that I can never _see_ him any
more. If I could only _see_ him--even a long way off! But suddenly it
all comes back that I can never _see_ him again--Never!"

Later she begged Dowie not to come to her in the night if she heard
sounds in her room.

"It will not hurt you so much if you don't see me," she said. "I'm used
to being by myself. When I was at Eaton Square I used to hide my face
deep in the pillow and press it against my mouth. No one heard. But no
one was listening as you will be. Don't come in, Dowie darling. Please
don't!"

All she wanted, Dowie found out as the days went by, was to be quiet and
to give no trouble. No other desires on earth had been left to her. Her
life had not taught her to want many things. And now--:

"Oh! please don't be unhappy! If I could only keep you from being
unhappy--until it is over!" she broke out all unconsciously one day. And
then was smitten to the heart by the grief in Dowie's face.

That was the worst of it all and sometimes caused Dowie's desperate hope
and courage to tremble on the brink of collapse. The child was thinking
that before her lay the time when it would be "all over."

A patient who held to such thoughts as her hidden comfort did not give
herself much chance.

Sometimes she lay for long hours on the sofa by the open window but
sometimes a restlessness came upon her and she wandered about the empty
rooms of the little castle as though she were vaguely searching for
something which was not there. Dowie furtively followed her at a
distance knowing that she wanted to be alone. The wide stretches of the
moor seemed to draw her. At times she stood gazing at them out of a
window, sometimes she sat in a deep window seat with her hands lying
listlessly upon her lap but with her eyes always resting on the farthest
line of the heather. Once she sat thus so long that Dowie crept out of
the empty stone chamber where she had been waiting and went and stood
behind her. At first Robin d