Larry’s face was dark; he was not used to opposition.  His guardians and his spiritual directors had alike found that while he was easy to lead, he was a difficulty and a danger to drive.  He was stirred to the depths now.  The strain of receiving Dick’s onslaught in silence, the shock of his collapse, and now the fire that Christian’s nearness and dearness had lit in him, all broke his self-control.  He held her to him.

“I will never let you go!  Never—!” His lips were on hers again, life, with all its difficulties, was again forgotten, the rhyme of the Fairies’ Well galloped in his hot brain: 

  “My heart in your hands, your heart in me.”

The sound of the hall door opening, and the grinding roar of a motor engine running down, recalled them both to this troublesome world.

But in Christian’s heart, whether from within or from without, a voice had spoken, telling the kisses, one by one, as though they were the petals of a flower.  “This year, next year, sometime, never!” If the last word had been “sometime,” or “never,” she knew not; she knew only that if what before her was the way of renunciation, she would find it a hard way to walk in.

Dr. Mangan stood, a massive presence, at the top of the stairs, and talked massively to Lady Isabel of Dick’s condition.

“Very critical—­no worries—­nourishment—­would he have a nurse?”

To which Lady Isabel, a poor, shaken, pallid Lady Isabel, with no more backbone than the shape of blancmange, which, it must be said, she somewhat resembled, replied:  “Nothing would induce him!”

“Then I should like to have a little talk with Miss Christian,” said the Big Doctor, beginning to walk downstairs, slowly, solemnly, solidly, like a trick-elephant at a circus.

Christian’s quick ears had heard his voice on the stairs, and she met him in the hall.  Larry stood irresolute at the door of the study.  His eyes met those of the Doctor, and something during the interchange of glances suggested that his presence was not desired.  He returned to the study and shut the door, and wished that he could have a word alone with the Doctor, just to put him up to what to say to Christian.  He could hear the heavy rumble of the Doctor’s bass voice, and the soft alto murmur of Christian’s replies.  She had the Irish voice, pitched on a low note, an instrument more apt for pathos than for gaiety, which is, perhaps, what gives to its gaiety so special a charm.

Larry stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, trying to steady himself.  Deep under his panic uncertainty as to the strength of his hold on Christian, was the anger that Dick’s denunciation had roused in him, and momently, as his mind went back over the interview, remembrance of the insults became more unendurable.  Abuse from the old to the young, and from a sick man to a sound one, cannot fail to rankle, since it cannot be flung back.  Generosity may impose silence, but it cannot obliterate an insult or heal a wound.