e sent it to you. You know I used to care for you more than I
did for any one."

Sybil's hands gripped the arms of the windsor chair. Was he really--was
it through her that he was----

"Come out," she said. "I hate this place; it stifles me. And you've
lived here--worked here!"

"I've lived here for eleven months and three days," he said. "Yes, come
out."

So they went out through the burning July sun, and Sybil found a
sheltered spot between a larch and a laburnum.

"Now," she said, throwing off her hat and curling her green, soft
draperies among the long grass. "Come and sit down and tell me----"

He threw himself on the grass.

"Sure it won't bore you?" he asked.

She took his hand and held it. He let her take it; but his hand did not
hold hers.

"I seem to remember," he said, "the last time I saw you--you were going
away, or something. You told me I ought to do something great; and I
told you--or, anyway, I thought to myself--that there was plenty of time
for that. I'd always had a sort of feeling that I _could_ do something
great whenever I chose to try. Well--yes, you did go away, of course; I
remember perfectly--and I missed you extremely. And some one told me I
looked ill; and I went to my doctor, and he sent me to a big swell, and
_he_ said I'd only got about a year to live. So then I began to think."

Her fingers tightened on the unresponsive hand.

"And I thought: Here I've been thirty years in this world. I've the
experience of twenty-eight and a half--I suppose the first little bit
doesn't count. If I'd had time, I meant to write another book, just to
show exactly what a man feels when he knows he's only got a year to
live, and nothing done--nothing done."

"I won't believe it," she said. "You don't _look_ ill; you're as lean as
a greyhound, but----"

"It may come any day now," he went on quietly; "but I've done something.
The book--it _is_ great. They all say so; and I know it, too. But at
first! Just think of gasping out your breath, and feeling that all the
things you had seen and known and felt were wasted--lost--going out with
you, and that you were going out like the flame of a candle, taking
everything you might have done with you."

"The book _is_ great," she said; "you _have_ done something."

"Yes. But for those two days I stayed in my rooms in St James's Street,
and I thought, and thought, and thought, and there was no one to care
where I went or what I did, except a girl who w