Her eyes waited for him to speak.  But they were not the eyes he knew, the eyes that had drawn him to confession.  It was borne in upon him that this (though it might be his last moment with her) was not the moment to confess.  There was a positive grossness in the idea of unburdening himself in the presence of this incommunicable grief.  It was like putting in a claim for consideration as an equal sufferer.  He had no right to obtrude himself upon her at all.  In her calm-eyed attention there was a hint—­a very delicate and gentle one—­that he would do well to be impersonal, business-like, and, above all, brief.

“It was about the library that I wanted to see you, Miss Harden.”

“Was it?  I was just going to ask you not to do anything more to the catalogue if you have not finished it.”

“I finished it ten days ago—­before the twenty-seventh.”

She smiled faintly.  “Then you kept your promise.  It doesn’t matter.  What I most wanted to speak to you about was the secretaryship I offered you.  I’m afraid we must give it up.”

“Oh—­Miss Harden—­” his tone expressed that he had always given it up, that it was not to be thought of for an instant.  But evidently she was possessed with the idea that he had a claim upon her.

“I’m very sorry, but as things have turned out I shan’t be able to keep a secretary.  In fact, as you may have heard, I’m not able to keep anything hardly—­not even my promises.”

“Please—­please don’t think of it—­”

“There is no use thinking of it.  Still, I wanted you to know that I really meant it—­I believed it could be done.  Of course I don’t know how much you really wanted it.”

“Wanted it?  I’d ’ave given half my life for a year of it.”

Lucia’s hand, laid lightly on the table’s edge, felt a strong vibration communicated to it from Mr. Rickman’s arm.  She looked up, in time to see his white face quiver before he hid it with his hand.

“I’m so sorry.  Did it mean so much to you?”

He smiled through his agony at the cause assigned to it.  “I’m not thinking of that.  What it means to me—­what it always will mean is your goodness—­in thinking of it.  In thinking of it now.”

It was his nearest approach to a sympathetic allusion.

She did not wince (perceptibly), but she ignored the allusion.

“Oh, that’s nothing.  You would have been of great use to me.  If I thought of helping you at all, my idea was simply—­how shall I put it?—­to make up in some way for the harm I’ve done you.”

“What harm have you ever done me?”

For one moment he thought that she had discovered his preposterous passion, and reproached herself for being a cause of pain.  But she explained.

“I ought to say the harm the catalogue did you.  I’m afraid it was responsible for your illness.”

He protested.  But she stuck to it.  “And after all I might just as well have let you go.  For the library will have to be sold.  But I did not know that.”