ook and strolled
out to join her, she didn't keep him in suspense.

She closed her novel as he approached, looking up at him with simple
directness. "I've something to tell you."

Behind the attention he gave to these words he registered the
observation that when you looked at her--which he had rarely done--you
saw she was pretty. Her white skin had a luminosity like that of satin,
and the mouth was sweet with a timid, apologetic tenderness. The glances
one got from her were almost too fleeting to show the color of the eyes,
but he knew they must be blue. Her hair had been striking to him from
the first, chiefly because it was of that hue for which there is no
English word, but which the French call _cendre_--ashen--something
between flaxen and brown, but with no relation to either--that might
have been bleached by a "treatment" only for its unmistakable gleam of
life. It waved naturally over the brows from a central parting, and
massed itself into a great coil behind. She was dressed simply in white
linen, with a belt of "watered" blue silk, and neat, pointed cuffs of
the same material.

Instinctively he knew that what she had to tell him must be important,
for otherwise she would not have come out of the shy depths into which,
like the Spirit of the Mountain, her life seemed to be withdrawn. What
it could be he was unable even to guess at. He smiled, however, and,
taking a casual tone so as not to strike too strong a note at first, he
said, as he sat down, "Have you?"

She continued to speak with the same simple directness. "It's about some
one you used to know."

He grew more grave. "Indeed? I should hardly have supposed that you
could know any one--whom I _used_ to know?"

"I do. I know--You won't mind my speaking right out, will you?"

"Of course not. Say anything you like."

"Well, I know Miss Maggie Clare."

"Great God!" He sank deeper into his wicker arm-chair, throwing one leg
over the other. He seemed to shrink away and to look up at her from
under his brows.

The shy serenity of her bearing was undisturbed. "I've got a message to
you from her."

He was unable to keep the note of resentment out of his voice. "What?"

"She's very ill. I think she's going to die. She thinks so herself. She
wants to know if--if you'd go and see her."

He slipped down deeper into his chair, his chin sunk into his fist. It
was quite like the act of cowering. It was long before he spoke. When he
did so the tone of r