"For heaven's sake get into the next room and shut the door."
He came over to me swiftly and rested his hands on my shoulders.
"Play up, Phil," he whispered, "for the sake of old times." Then he left me, and the door of the sitting-room closed softly behind him.
When I heard footsteps on the stairs and realised that the game had really commenced, the ambiguity of my position overwhelmed me; I wished myself, for a moment, well out of the affair at any price. But the thought of the greater strain upon St. Alleyne, and what it meant to him, restored my composure, and I waited with closed eyes. The door opened, and I heard Biddy's voice say, "Here's Miss O'Callaghan to see ye, sorr." When I looked up, a vision of loveliness greeted my eyes.
Miss O'Callaghan came towards me with a face full of the tenderest solicitude. She was wearing a tailor-made dress that fitted her to perfection, and on her head she had a large hat, from under which tiny tendrils of dark hair had escaped; her skin was of the whiteness of rose petals except where the blood flushed, her eyes had the look of wet violets in spring. My lips murmured incoherent thanks and welcome. I could not force my mind away from the waiting figure in the next room.
"You wished to see me," she said, in a soft voice that had an under-note of sadness. "If I can help you, please be quite free with me. It's to be my life's work to help those who are in trouble."
"Your life's work?" I repeated.
"Yes," she said, "I'm to go into a convent."
"My trouble will seem very small to you, but to me it seems great, and it has to do with so worldly a thing as love."
Her face flushed and paled again before she answered—