"Margharita! You have come at last. It is done, then. Say that it is done!"
She stood quite still in the humble red-tiled sitting-room, and looked at him with a great compassion shining out of her dark, clear eyes. He was worn almost to a shadow, and his limbs were shaking with weakness, as he half rose to greet her. Only his eyes were still alight and burning. Save for them he might have been a corpse.
Something of the old passionate pity swept through her as she stood there, but its fierceness had died away. Her heart leaped no longer in quick response to the fire in those still undimmed eyes. She had been a girl then, a girl with all the fierce untrained nature of her mother's race; she was a woman now, a sad-faced, sorrowful woman. He was quick to see the change.
"Margharita, my child, you have been ill."
Still she did not answer. Silently she knelt down by the side of his armchair and took his withered, delicate hand in hers. A great bowl of white hyacinths stood on a table by the window, and the air was faint with their perfume.
"I am not ill," she said gently. "I was frightened on my way here, and had to run. There was a fire last night at the lunatic asylum at Fritton, and some of the mad people have escaped. I saw one of them in the distance, and the keepers after him. They wanted me to go back, but I would come."
He stooped down and kissed her forehead, with cold, dry lips.
"I knew that you would be here soon," he said. "My letters reached you safely?"
"Yes."
She shuddered at the gathering strength in his tone, and the fierce light which had swept into his face.