"Yes, I suppose so."
"He was not very strong as a boy. At one time he seemed better, but it was only for a time."
"I'm very sorry," said Barbara, standing up. "Please tell him I came to ask how he was before I went."
Mrs. Harding rose too, and looked straight into her visitor's eyes. "Would you like to see him?"
"I don't know," the girl faltered. "I'm not sure he would care to see me. If he would—"
Mrs. Harding interrupted her, "Excuse me a moment," and vanished.
Barbara, left alone, stood confounded. She was taken by surprise, and yet she was conscious that to see Reynold Harding was what she had really been hoping and dreading from the first. Some one moved overhead. Perhaps he would say "No," in that harsh, sudden voice of his. Well, then, she would escape from this house, which was like a prison to her, and go back to Adrian, knowing that she had done all she could. Perhaps he would laugh, and say "Yes."
She listened with strained attention. A chair was moved, a fire was stirred, a door was closed. Then her hostess reappeared. "Will you come this way?" she said.
Barbara obeyed without a word. The matter was taken out of her hands, and nothing but submission was possible. The grey dusk was gathering on the stairs, and through a tall window, rimmed with squares of red and blue, rose a view of roofs and chimneys half drowned in fog. Barbara passed onward and upward, went mutely through a door which was opened for her, and saw Reynold Harding sitting by the fire. He lifted his face and looked at her. In an instant there flashed into her memory a verse of the old song of Barbara Allen, sung to her as a child for her name's sake:—
"Slowly, slowly, she came up,