“No, Kitty.  I don’t think that.”

“You might, really.  If he hadn’t been in the way she would have known that she cared for you and let you know it, too.  But nothing that he ever did or didn’t do comes up to this.”

“The truth is, Kitty, he thinks I’m rather a bad lot, you know.”

“My dear Keith, he thinks that if he doesn’t marry Lucy he’d rather you didn’t.  He certainly hit on the most effectual means of preventing it.”

“Oh, did he!  He doesn’t know me.  I shall marry her whatever Sir Wilfrid Spence says.  If she’s ill, all the more reason why I should look after her.  I’m only afraid lest—­lest—­”

She knew what he thought and could not say—­lest it should not be for very long.

“There are some things,” he said quietly, “that can’t be taken away from me.”

Kitty was silent; for she knew what things they were.

“You can trust her to me, Kitty?”

“I can indeed.”

And so on Sunday the great man came down.

It was over in half an hour.  That half-hour Keith spent in pacing up and down the library, the place of so many dear and tender and triumphant memories.  They sharpened his vision of Lucy doomed, of her sweet body delivered over to the torture.

He did not hear Kitty come in till she laid her hand upon his arm.  He turned as if at the touch of destiny.

“Don’t Keith, for Goodness’ sake.  It’s all right.  Only—­he wants to see you.”

Sir Wilfrid Spence stood in the morning-room alone.  He looked very grave and grim.  He had a manner, a celebrated manner that had accomplished miracles by its tremendous moral effect.  It had helped to set him on his eminence and he was not going to sacrifice it now.  He fixed his gaze on the poet as he entered and held him under it for the space of half a minute without speaking.  He seemed, this master of the secrets of the body, to be invading despotically the province of the soul.  It struck Rickman that the great specialist was passing judgement on him, to see whether in all things he were worthy of his destiny.  The gaze thus prolonged became more than he could bear.

“Do you mind telling me at once what’s wrong with her?”

“There isn’t anything wrong with her.  What fool ever told you that there was?  She has been made ill with grief.”

Lucia herself came to him there and led him back into the library.  They sat together in the window-seat, held silent for a little while by the passing of that shadow of their fear.

“Keith,” she said at last.  “Is it true that you loved me when you were with me, here, ever so long ago?”

He answered her.

“And when you came to me and I was horrid to you, and when I sent you away?  And when I never wrote to you, and Horace made you think I’d forgotten you?  Did you love me then?”

“Yes, more than I did before, Lucy.”

“But—­Keith—­you didn’t love me when you were loving somebody else?”