conversation.

Lily was, once more, knocked up, and the Canon called in Maurice to
prescribe. He arrived in the late afternoon and was taken by the Canon
into Lily's little sitting-room, where she lay on a couch by the fire. A
small, shaded, reading lamp defined the shadows craftily.

"Now, Dale," the Canon said, "for goodness' sake tell her to be more
orderly and to do less--mind and body. She behaves as if life was a
whirlpool. She swims stupendously, tell her to float--and give her a
tonic."

And he went out of the room shaking his head at the culprit on the
couch.

When the door had shut upon him, Maurice came up to the fire in silence
and looked at Lily. She smiled at him rather hopelessly, and then
suddenly she said:

"Poor dear father! To ask you to make me take life so easily!"

That remark was the first onward gliding of their minds in speech, the
uttered continuance of the hitherto silent colloquy between them.
Maurice sat down. He accepted the irony of the situation suggested by
the Canon without attempt at a protest.

"Life can never be easy, if one thinks," he said. Then, trying to adopt
the medical tone, he added:

"But you think too much. I have often felt that lately."

"Yes," she said.

Her eyes were bent on him with a scrutiny that was nearly ungirlish.
Maurice tried not to see it as he put his fingers on her wrist. She
added:

"I have felt that about you too."

Maurice had taken out his watch. Without speaking he timed the
fluttering pulsation of her life, then, dropping her hand and returning
the watch to his pocket:

"Your too eager thoughts were of me?" he asked.

"Yes, but yours were not of me."

"Not always," he said, with an honesty that pleased her.

And again Lily saw above his face the shadowy crown of thorns. She was
really unwell and ready to be unstrung. Perhaps this made her say
hastily, as she shifted lower on her cushions:

"I'm partly ill to-day because you let me see how horribly you are
suffering."

"Yes," Maurice said heavily. "I let you see it. Why's that?"

There was nothing like a shock to either of them in the directness of
their words. They seemed spoken rightly at the inevitable time. No
thought of question, of denial, was entertained by them. Maurice sat
there by her and dropped his mask utterly.

"Miss Alston, I am a haunted man," he said.

And, in a moment, as he spoke, he seemed to be old. Lily said nothing.
She twisted between her little fing