"Oh!" said Barbara, "you are tired!"
"Mortally," he replied, faintly unclosing his lips. "Good-bye."
She paused for an instant, looking at the dropped lids which hid those eyes that she had feared. She could do nothing for him but leave him. "Good-bye," she said, very softly, as if she feared to disturb his rest, and then she went away.
The window on the stairs was a dim grey shape. Barbara groped her way down, and stood hesitating in the passage. It was really only half a minute before the maid came up from the basement with matches to light the gas, but it was like an age of dreary perplexity.
"I've just left Mr. Harding," she said hurriedly to the girl, whose matter-of-fact face was suddenly illuminated by the jet of flame. "I'm afraid he's tired. I think somebody ought to go to him."
"Mind the step, miss," was the reply. "I'll tell missis. I dare say he'll have his cocoa, I think it's past the time."
"Oh, don't wait for me!" cried Barbara. "I'm all right."
She felt as if Reynold Harding might die by his fireside while she was being ceremoniously shown out. She reached the door first and shut it quickly after her, to cut all attentions short. She had hurried out at the gate, under the foggy outline of a little laburnum, when a shout from the pursuing cabman aroused her to the consciousness that she had started off to walk.
Thus arrested, she got into the hansom, covered with confusion, and not daring to look at the man as she gave her address. He must certainly think that she meant to cheat him, or that she was mad. She shrank back into the seat, feeling sure that he would look through the little hole in the roof, from time to time, to see what his eccentric fare might be doing, and she folded her hands and sat very still, to impress him with the idea that she had become quite sane and well-behaved. As if it mattered what the cabman thought! And yet she blushed over her blunder while Reynold Harding's "I love you," was still sounding in her ears, and while the hansom rolled southward through the lamp-lit, glimmering streets, to the tune of Barbara Allen.