The wick caught evenly all round, and as the twin flames sprang up bright and smokeless in the funnel, Lawrence’s eyes were upon her. Her face, she knew then, must be ravaged and unsightly from her long crying. At any former time of her life – above all with Louis – she would have shaded the unmerciful light hastily, turning her face aside the while. But this evening with Lawrence she had no more impulse to conceal it than she had to display it for his sympathy. Raising her head she returned his look starkly, and thus they both stood for a long second with the revealing lamp between them.

“Yes?” Joanna asked him. That he would only have come to her on some urgent errand, she knew of herself. And if she had not known it, his white, fixed face would have told her that something decisive had happened to him.

But he had seen her now, and in his eyes his own trouble made way for hers.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, instead of replying to her question.

“Nothing is wrong. I’ve been crying. I’m all right now. I’m going to Italy to-morrow.”

It seemed odd to her that he should show no surprise.

“To Italy, you are going?” he said. “ … I’m going away too. That’s what I came to-night to say.”

Joanna was the one to be astonished. His way of speaking was strange.

“Where are you going?” she asked wondering.

“I don’t know yet, nor for how long. North, probably. It really doesn’t matter. Though I think I’m about due a holiday.”

“I’m afraid you are ill. You look ill,” said Joanna, anxiously. There was that kind of sharpness in his features which often presages severe illness.

But he assured her brusquely that it was only a cold hanging about him.

“How long will you be in Italy?”

She did not know. She begged him to hurry home and change his clothes.

“Good bye, then,” Lawrence said, holding out his hand – “It was mostly to tell you I was going away that I came. I couldn’t help coming and now I feel you are going South for the same reason that I am going North. You have come to an end – really come to an end at last. Is it so?”

Joanna nodded. She was full of wonder, yet it seemed natural that he should know about her.

“I have been at an end now for ages,” she said. “The thing is, is there any new beginning?”

“For you I feel there must be: for me I see none,” replied Lawrence. “I’m simply down and out; last time we talked I was glib enough. I thought I knew what it was. But I didn’t.”