"Yes, but you can't see her," the small boy answered. "She's in with the guv'nor now."
Rowan hesitated. "Perhaps you will kindly tell her, when she is disengaged," he said, "that her brother is here, and would like to speak to her for a moment."
The office-boy withdrew his head, but he seemed uncertain. Rowan seated himself upon a hard bench set against the wall. On a small round table in front of him were pens and paper and a copy of the trade journal. Rowan turned over its pages listlessly for a moment or two, and then set himself down to wait. It was quite half-an-hour before a door in front of him opened, and Winifred Rowan appeared. She looked at her brother in blank astonishment. She was paler than ever, there were dark rings under her dilated eyes. She looked at him as one looks upon some strange monstrosity.
"Basil!" she murmured. "It can't be you! And yet—Basil!"
"It is I," he answered.
"Free?" she cried.
He laughed, a little bitterly. "They have let me out to die," he answered. "The doctor to-day signed a certificate that I have no reasonable chance of living longer than another month, so here I am, free, Winifred, if you like to call it freedom."
She came and sat on the bench by his side. At that moment it was hard to say, from their appearance, which of the two seemed the nearer death.
"When were you released?" she asked.
"Half-an-hour ago," he answered. "I came straight here. I wondered whether you could get a month's vacation, and come with me somewhere south. We have enough money for a little time."