liked Cloherty best,” he hurried on, “and she was probably quite right, but I want you to know that I would have played up all right.”  Then he said, hesitating, that Barty had told him a thing that he didn’t quite understand the rights of.  “You must forgive me if I felt angry.  I daresay there’s a lot to be said on your side if I only knew it.  But I don’t and you can’t tell me now—­” He stood up, and touching the cold brow, smoothed back the damp hair.  “You were always awfully good to me,” he said, and, stooping, kissed the forehead, as Barty had done, and found that his eyes were full of tears.

As he stood erect again, he saw he was not alone in the room.  A girl was standing just behind him with a basket of Christmas roses in her hand, a girl who had come quietly in while he was speaking, and had waited, watching, with eyes that saw more than Larry’s kneeling figure beside the dead man, listening, with senses that were perceptive of a fellow-listener, in whom were newly-learnt impulses of self-reproach and penitence.

“Christian!” said Larry, trembling, as he had trembled when he spoke to her by the Druid Stone on Cnocan an Ceoil Sidhe.