“O Christie, O Christie!” he cried to her in his heart, “I couldn’t have been any good to you, I couldn’t have been myself with you any more, if that face in your glass hadn’t stopped me! It would have changed everything, Chris! It would have ruined everything.”

The inner voice of self-dialogue died down, as the outer voice of his monotonous intoning sank into silence; and the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock and the faint, weird whisper of the wind in the chimney.

“Christie,” he said aloud; and so deep had been the silence, and so drowned had they both been in their separate thoughts, that the syllables of her name seemed to fall into an invisible stretch of water.

She lifted her head from her hands and sat up straight, fixing her gaze upon him in the old, steady, unfaltering manner.

“Yes, Wolf?” she murmured.

“I want to tell you something, Christie.”