eyes, too, were dim, her mouth had lost its delicate outline, her cheeks seemed to have grown slightly, ever so slightly, fuller, and the skin looked glazed as if by the courses of many tears.  He had noticed these changes before; of late they had come many times in the twelve hours; but to-night it seemed not so much a momentary disfigurement as a sudden precocious maturity, as if nature had stamped her face with the image of what it would be ten, fifteen years hence.  And as he looked at her a cold and subtle pang went through him, a curious abominable sensation, mingled with a sort of spiritual pain.  He dared not give a name to the one feeling, but the other he easily recognized as self-reproach.  He had known it once or twice before.

He stooped over her and kissed her.  “Why are you sitting up here and crying, all by your little self?”

She shook her head.

“What are you crying about?  You didn’t suppose I was angry with you?”

“No.  I wouldn’t have cried if you had been angry.  I’m not crying now.  I don’t know why I cried at all.  I’m tired, or cold, or something.”

“Why don’t you go to bed, then?”

“I’m going.”  She rose wearily and went to the dressing-table.  He watched her reflection in the looking-glass.  As she raised her arms to take the pins from her hair, her white face grew whiter, it was deadly white.  He went to her help, unpinning the black coils, smoothing them and plaiting them in a loose braid.  He did it in a business-like way, as if he had been a hairdresser, he whose pulse used to beat faster if he so much as touched her gown.  Then he gave her a cold business-like kiss that left her sadder than before.  The fact was, he had thought she was going to faint.  But Mrs. Nevill Tyson was not of the fainting kind; she was only tired, tired and sick.

It was arranged that Tyson was to leave by the two o’clock train the next day.  He was packing up his things about noon, when Molly staggered into his dressing-room with her teeth chattering.  Clinging to the rail of the bedstead for support, she gazed at the preparations for his departure.

“I wish you wouldn’t go away, Nevill,” she said.

“It’s all right, I’ll be back in a day or two.”  He blushed at his own lie.

Mrs. Nevill Tyson sat down on the bed and began to cry.

“What’s the matter, Moll, eh?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” she sobbed.  “I’m afraid, Nevill—­I’m so terribly afraid.”

“Why, what are you afraid of?” He looked up and was touched by the terror in her face.

“I don’t know.  But I can bear it—­I won’t be silly and frightened—­I can bear it if you’ll only stay.”

She slid on to her knees beside him; and while she implored him to stay, her hands worked unconsciously, helping him to go—­smoothing and folding his clothes, and laying them in little heaps about the floor, her figure swaying unsteadily as she knelt.