Seeing Yvonne at that time of the morning was out of the question. But he penetrated to the landing outside the ward and had a few words with the sister in charge. She was a fresh, pleasant-faced woman, who, having fallen in love with Yvonne, felt kindly disposed toward her friends.

Madame Latour was slowly recovering. One of the most lingering of the sequelae of diphtheria, diphtheritic paralysis, had set in. It was her larynx and left arm that were affected. At present she was suffering from general weakness. It would be some time yet before she could be moved.

“Do you think I could see her?” asked Joyce—“that is to say, if she would care about it.”

“Certainly,” replied the sister. “It would probably do her good. To-day is a visiting day—after two o’clock.”

“I wonder whether she would like it,” said Joyce, questioningly.

“I will take her a message,” said the sister.

He scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper and handed it to her. She retired and presently returned, smiling.

“She will be delighted. I have not seen her look like that since she has been here. ‘Tell him it will be a joy to see him.’ Those were her words.”

Joyce thanked her warmly, rased his hat, and departed. It was a fine crisp morning. The message seemed to bring a breath of something sweet into the air. He walked along almost buoyantly in spite of the sad plight of Yvonne. The appalling weight of loneliness was lifted from his shoulders. The sight of him would be a joy to one living creature. It was a new conception, and it winged his feet.

On the stroke of two the great doors of the ward opened, and he entered with a group of visitors, chiefly women of the poorer classes, some carrying babies. It was bewildering at first—the long double row of beds, each with its pale, wistful woman’s face. Some of the patients were sitting up, with shawls or wraps around them; the greater number lay back on their pillows, turning eyes of languid interest towards the visitors. Two beds curtained round broke the uniformity of the two white lines of bedsteads. At the end of the ward, a great open fireplace, with glowing blocks of coal, struck a note of cheerfulness in the grey November light, that streamed through the series of high windows. Joyce felt a man’s shyness in walking among these strange sick women, and looked helplessly down the ward from the doorway, to try to discover Yvonne. The sister came to his help from a neighbouring bedside.

“At the very end. The last bed on the left.”

Joyce walked down the druggetted aisle, and as soon as he saw her and knew himself to be recognised, he quickened his pace.

There she was, half sitting in the bed, propped up by pillows, her wavy dark hair like a nimbus around her pale face. In honour of the visit she had done up her hair, with infinite difficulty, poor child, and put on a pretty white dressing-jacket tied with knots of crimson ribbon. His heart was smitten with pity. She was so changed, so wasted. Her delicate features were pinched, her childlike lips blanched. Only the old Yvonne’s eyes remained—the great, pathetic, winning dark eyes. They gave him glad and grateful welcome.

“Yvonne.”

It was all he could find in his head to say as he pressed her little thin hand.

“How good of you to come to see me,” she said.

Joyce was unprepared. It was not Yvonne’s voice—once as sweet in speech as in singing; but a toneless, distressed sound devoid of quality, like that of a cracked silver bell. He could not conceal the shadow of dismay on his face. She was quick to note it.

“I am afraid I speak like a wicked old raven,” she said with a smile; “but you mustn’t mind.”

“I can’t tell you how grieved I am to see you like this,” he said, sitting down by the bedside. “You must have been very ill. Poor Yvonne.”

“Yes. Awfully ill. You would have been quite sorry to see how ill I was. Do you mind moving your chair further down, so that I can look at you? I can’t turn my head, you know. Is n’t it silly not to be able to turn one’s head?”

“You must make haste and get well,” he said, after he had complied with her request “I’m afraid I can’t,” she said, looking at him wistfully. “They all say it’s going to be a long, long business. But I want to know how you came here—to England, I mean,” she added more brightly, after a pause. “It was such a startling surprise when Sister brought me your note this morning. Why have you left Africa? I ’ve been dying to know all day.”

Joyce sketched rapidly the events that had led him back—the death of Noakes, the year of wretched apathy, the purchase of his book by the publishers, the craving for civilisation.

“So I sold out and came home,” he concluded. “I have been back a fortnight.”

“You must have been very sad at losing your friend,” said Yvonne. “Death is an awful, awful thing. Have you ever thought of it? A person is living and feeling, like you and me, to-day—and to-morrow—gone—out of the world—for ever and ever.”

Her voice sank to a whisper and she looked at him out of great, awe-stricken eyes.

“I have lost my dear friend too—just lately. Did you know?”

“Yes,” he replied gently. “I wrote to her for your address and her sister answered the letter, telling me of her death.”

“Wasn’t it terrible? And she so bright and brave and strong. I never loved anybody as I loved her. It was only after she was buried that I knew—and then I wished I had died instead—I who am no good to any one at all. And I am alive. Isn’t it an awful mystery?”

The man’s eyes fell for a moment beneath the intense, child-like earnestness of hers. Silence fell upon them. He stretched out his arm and took her hand that rested outside the coverlet. A man is often instinctively driven to express his sympathy by touch, where a woman would find words.

After a while she withdrew her hand gently, as if to break the current of thoughts.

“I was wondering why you looked different,” she said. “You have grown a beard.”

“Yes,” he said, with a sudden laugh—the transition was so abrupt. “I was too slack to shave in South Africa. Don’t you like it?”

“Oh, not at all. It spoils you.”

“I will cut it off at once.”

“Not just to please me?”

“Just to please you. It will be a new sensation.”

“To have it off?”

“No—to please you, Yvonne.”

Her eyes smiled gratefully at him.

“Tell me when I must go,” he said, after a while. “I must n’t tire you. And you may have other visitors.”

“Don’t go yet. No one else will come.”

“How do you know?”

“You are the only person who has been to see me since I was brought here,” she replied sadly.

Joyce looked at her for a moment incredulously.

“Do you mean to say you have been quite alone here, among strangers, all these weeks?”

“Yes,” she said. “But Sister is kind to me, and they allow me all sorts of little indulgences.”

“But you should be among loving friends, Yvonne,” said Joyce.

“I have so few. And I have told no one that I am here. I couldn’t. Besides, whom could I tell?”

Joyce could not understand. It was so strange for Yvonne to be friendless. Delicacy forbade him to question further.

“I have had a lot of trouble, you know,” she said. “It has been nearly all trouble for over two years. I wrote and told you what had happened. Then I went to live with Geraldine Vicary, and began to sing again. But I was always being laid up with my throat and I never knew whether I could fulfil an engagement when I made it—so I didn’t get on as I used to. People won’t employ you if they fear you may have to throw them over at the last moment, will they? And Geraldine used to keep me in a great deal, for fear I should hurt my voice. But, you see, I had to make some money. So I went out and sang just before this illness, when I ought not, and my throat became inflamed and I caught another cold, and it got worse and worse until diphtheria came on. Then poor Dina caught it and there was no one to nurse me. You could n’t expect her sister, who did n’t know me, to do much, could you? And then Dina was just giving up her flat, and of course I couldn’t keep it on—so the doctor thought I had better come here. ‘J’y suis, j’y reste. It is not a gay little story, is it?”

“It is a heart-rending story altogether,” said Joyce, with a concerned puckering of the forehead. “I wish I could do something to brighten you, Yvonne.”

“You have done so,” she said with a smile, “by coming to see me. How good of you to remember—and, you know, by your not writing, I thought you had quite forgotten.”

“Forgive me, Yvonne—a kind of dull brutishness came over me—I couldn’t.”

“And I could n’t either, after the one I wrote—about my trouble—at Fulminster. You never answered it, and I thought—It was n’t because you despised me, was it?”

“I did n’t get the letter, Yvonne,” he said, unable to disregard this second reference as he had done the first. “It must have been the one I heard was lost. I will explain afterwards. I thought you were happy at Fulminster—so why should I inflict my eternal grumblings on you?”

“Then don’t you know what has happened?” asked Yvonne, with wider eyes and a little quiver of the lip.

“I learned it a few days ago. I went to Fulminster to find you, as my letters were returned to me through the Post Office. I was determined to discover you, but I never dreamed of finding you here. I came as soon I got the news this morning.”

“I have one friend left,” said Yvonne.

“And you shall always have him, if you will,” said Joyce. “You are the only one he has.”

“Poor fellow,” said Yvonne.

Though the sweet voice was broken and hard, there was the same tender pity in the words as when she had uttered them four years back, on their first re-meeting.

“We are two lonesome bodies, are n’t we?” she added.

“We ’ll do our best to comfort each other,” said Joyce.

The visiting hour was nearly at an end, and the ward was growing silent again. The sister came down the aisle and stood by Yvonne’s bed and smoothed her pillows.

“You have had quite enough talking for one day,” she said pleasantly. “It has given you quite a colour—but we mustn’t overdo it.”

Joyce rose to take his leave.

“I may come again, the next time?” he asked.

“Would you?” said Yvonne, with an eager look.

“I would come to-morrow—every day, if they would let me,” he said with conviction.

He shook hands with her and walked away. At the end of the ward he turned, looked back and saw the mass of black against the white pillow and the specks of crimson that showed Yvonne. He hated leaving her among strangers and the rough comforts of an open ward in a hospital. An odd feeling of personal responsibility was mingled with his resentment against the freaks of fortune—an irrational sense of mean-spiritedness in letting her lie there.

He went back to his work, cheered and strengthened within; but his outlook on life was darkened by one more shadow of the inexorable cruelty of fate. That he should have suffered—well and good. It was a penalty he was paying. But Yvonne, the sweetest, innocentest soul alive—why should her head be brought low? And thus the pages that he wrote grew darker by the shadow.

A fortnight passed, during which he saw her as often as the visiting hours allowed. He brought her whatever little trifles he could afford, and she accepted them with the eager gratification of a child. There was a secondhand bookshop he had come across during his late wanderings, in Upper Street, Islington, which had a speciality in cheap, tattered French novels. Thither he tramped one day in order to gratify a desire she had expressed, and spent an hour turning over the stock. It seemed hard not to be able to go into a West End shop and order the newest Paris fiction; but a poor devil must do as best he can and be cheerful. Yvonne’s delight repaid him for wounded pride. She dipped into them all, while he was there, turning to the last page to see how they ended. And then the rakish air their soiled yellow covers gave to the bed, as they sprawled upon it, amused them both.

They talked of many things. Yvonne interested herself in the patients and gossiped about their progress and their eccentricities. Often her artless candour and innate love of laughter gave him details unfit perhaps for ears masculine. Then she would catch herself up, while a faint tinge of colour came into her cheek, and with still smiling eyes, say:

“I always forget that you’re a man. You ought to remind me.”

Joyce, for his part, strove to amuse her with whatever gleams of brightness he could find in his colonial adventures. Noakes grew to be the hero of an Arthurian cycle. As for the fat Boer woman, he was surprised at the amount of grim humour he extracted from her doings.

“I hope you are going to put it in a book,” Yvonne would say, with her little air of wisdom. “You must n’t waste it all upon me.”

And Joyce, by thus disintegrating incidents from his confused mass of impressions, found the talks of material benefit as well as a delight. For a delight they were; the more so, because Yvonne’s gladness at his visits was so obviously genuine and spontaneous. She told him that she counted the hours between them. And Yvonne scarcely exaggerated. His visits were bright spots in a sorrowful, fear-haunted time. When he came, she summoned up all her strength and courage so as to make the hour pass pleasantly. Men do not like crying, complaining women, thought poor Yvonne. Unless she was bright for him, he might grow tired of coming, and then she would be lonelier than before. So Yvonne told him little of the anxieties that lay like a dead weight upon her poor little soul and kept her awake at nights, amid the moans of the sleeping women, that sounded faint and ghostly in the dim ward.

Her patient acceptance of her lot won Joyce’s admiration. But of her real position he had no idea. The gentleman in him that had survived his shame and degradation forbade him to pry into her private affairs. Besides, he took it for granted that when she recovered, she would live by herself again, in the old way, and that her drawing-room would be a haven of rest to him for indefinite years. The question of nursing alone, he thought, and her incomprehensible friendlessness, had brought her to the hospital. He longed for her to leave it.

One day, however, he found her lying down in bed, her hair in dark loose masses over the pillow, her face turned away towards the sister who was sitting by her side. The latter rose on seeing him, and hurried forward to meet him in the aisle.

“Be as kind as you can to her,” she said; “she is in great trouble to-day, poor little thing.”

“What is the matter?” asked Joyce, anxiously.

“Let her speak for herself. I was to send you away when you came. She was not fit to see you, she said. But I am sure it will comfort her to talk to a friend.”

The sister moved away, and Joyce approached Yvonne’s bedside with quick steps. Something serious must have happened.

Yvonne rased a wan, desolate face and eyes heavy with crying, and put out her hand timidly from beneath the bedclothes. He retained it, as he sat down upon the chair just vacated by the sister. The few little cakes he had brought her he placed on the stand near by. She looked too woe-begone for cakes.

“I have come in spite of your message,” he said. “Why did you want to send me away?”

“I am too miserable,” murmured Yvonne, in her broken voice.

“What has happened to make you miserable?” he asked very softly. “Tell me, if it is anything I can hear.”

“It’s my voice that has gone,” cried Yvonne in a sob. “They told me this morning—the doctor brought a throat specialist—I shall never be able to sing again—never.”

Before this sudden calamity the man was powerless for comfort.

“My poor little woman!” he said.

“It is worse than losing a limb,” moaned Yvonne. “I have been dreading it—hoping against hope all along. I wished I had died instead of Dina. I wish I could die now.” The tears came again. She drew away her hand and dabbed her eyes with a miserable little wet rag of a handkerchief.

“Don’t,” said Joyce, helplessly. “If you give way you will make yourself worse. They may be mistaken. Perhaps it will come again after a year or two.”

He strove to cheer her, brought forward all the arguments he could think of, all the tender phrases his unaccustomed mind could suggest. At last the tears ceased for a time.

“But it is my means of livelihood gone,” she said. “When I leave here I shall starve.”

“Not while I live,” said Joyce, impulsively. Then he reflected. Surely she could not be entirely without means. He coloured slightly at his remark, as at an impertinence.

“I shall never get any money any more as long as I live,” said Yvonne. “I can only go from this hospital into the workhouse. And I won’t go there. I will pray to die rather.”

“But,” began Joyce, in an embarrassed way,

“I don’t understand. Forgive me for touching upon it—but has not Everard—?”

“No, oh, no! I refused. I could n’t take his money, if I was not his wife.”

“That’s absurd,” said Joyce. But his opinion did not alter the facts. He remained for a moment in thought. “Don’t lose heart,” he said at length. “Things are never as bad as they seem. I ’ve had awfully bad times and yet I have pulled through, somehow. You can live quietly for a little on what you have, and then—”

“But I have n’t a penny, Stephen,” she cried piteously. “Not a penny in the world. I earned scarcely anything the last year. If it hadn’t been for Dina, I don’t know what I should have done. I don’t own anything but a few sticks of furniture and some clothes—”

“Where are they?”

“The porter’s wife at the mansions is keeping them for me, I believe. They may be sold. I was too ill to trouble.”

“I ’ll see about them for you,” said Joyce. His heart was moved with great pity for the sweet, helpless little soul. It seemed hard to realise that, when they had met four years ago, he had looked upon her as a Lady Bountiful, who had only to stretch out her kind arm to save him from starvation. Oh, the whirligig of time! And yet the memory of her help was very precious to him.

“You must let me act for you, Yvonne, will you?”

“You have your own troubles, poor fellow,” said Yvonne.

“Yours will drive mine away, so they will be a blessing in disguise. I wonder if you could trust me?”

“I have always done so—and I do. Are n’t you the only friend I have?”

“That is what beats me entirely,” he said. “What are all your friends doing?”

“They have all disappeared gradually,” said Yvonne. “My poor marriage cut me adrift from my old circle. And at Fulminster—I did n’t make many real friends.”

“There was a girl you wrote to me about once or twice.”

“Sophia Wilmington? She’s married and gone out to India. I should have written to her if she had been in England, for she was fond of me.”

“I should have thought that the whole world was fond of you, Yvonne.”

“I don’t know,” she said wistfully. “It seems that I have always been a kind of waif. I never had any solid kinds of friends, families and so forth—except your dear mother. I once knew a lot of professionals—but I saw men mostly—I could never tell why—and they don’t bother about you much when they’ve lost sight of you, do they? I thought Vandeleur might have wondered what had become of me.”

“Dear, dear!” said Joyce, reflectively. “I remember Vandeleur from the long ago.”

“Yes, he’s an old friend. But, you see, it was through Dina. He behaved badly to her and married Elsie Carnegie—and so they were cuts. I only saw him once all last year. I heard she was awfully jealous. Is n’t it silly of a woman? I think, if he knew I was here he’d come. But what would be the use?”

“Not much, except to say a friendly word to you. But still—while you were living with Miss Vicary, you must have made some acquaintances. It seems so extraordinary.”

“We lived so very much alone,” explained Yvonne. “Poor Dina didn’t know many people—no one liked her. With one exception—and he died long ago—I think I am the only one in the world who ever loved Dina. No—I am just a waif—that’s what I am.”

In her simple way she had accounted to him accurately for her life since her rupture with Everard. At first she had been too sore at heart to go much into the world. Then Geraldine, whose influence with her was paramount, continually discouraged her from renewing old acquaintanceships. Her friends had literally melted away. Had she so chosen, she might have interested in her misfortunes a score of professional well-wishers. But Yvonne was proud in many unexpected ways, and would have died rather than have the shame of sending the hat round for relief. As for communicating with Fulminster, it was not to be thought of.

“I don’t care,” she added, after a pause; “I have found you again.”

“Then dry your poor eyes,” he said comfortingly; “and don’t think any more of the worries. Don’t you remember how happy you made me once, when I was in desperate straits—when all the world cast me off but you? You are still the only being who knows me and cares whether I live or die. You are neither going to starve, Yvonne, nor die in a workhouse. As long as I have a penny you shall have half of it. Don’t think of anything more than the immediate future, little woman. We will manage that all right. Be comforted.”

He spoke earnestly, leaning forward with his arm on the bed. The precariousness of his own fortunes scarcely occurred to him. He was deeply moved. At that moment he would have cut off his right hand for her.

Yvonne thanked him with her eyes, which grew very soft and grateful. His man’s strength brought her comfort. She trusted him implicitly, as she had all her life trusted those who were kind to her. She closed her eyes for a moment with a little sigh of relief. She was so content to yield to the generous hand that was taking the terrible burden from her shoulders, felt as if she could go to sleep like a tired child. When she opened her eyes they were almost smiling.

“I ’ll try to be happy again, so as to thank you, Stephen,” she said.

“Well, here is something for you—what you like—eat one to show me you are comforted.”

He put the paper bag into her hand, and, tilting back his chair, watched her pleased expression as she peeped into the mouth and drew out one of the cakes.

“Oh, how sweet of you!” she said, with a flash of her old sunlight.

Suddenly he rose, and stood, hands in pockets, by the window, frowning absently at the gathering mist of evening outside. A conviction was forcing itself on his mind—a cold douche for his quixotic impulses. Obvious right and common-sense prevailed.

“Yvonne,” he said turning round. “You had no quarrel with Everard, had you, at parting?”

“Oh, no,” she replied, looking up round-eyed from her paper-bag. “He was very kind to me.”

“Have you written to him about this?”

“No. We arranged we should not correspond. He sent me word when he was going out to New Zealand. But I couldn’t let him know—I should be ashamed. Oh, no, Stephen, I could n’t write to him and say, ‘I am a beggar now, please give me charity.’ Why should he support me?”

“I hate questioning you,” said Joyce in some embarrassment, “but—is it repugnant to you to—to think of Everard?”

“Why, of course not, Stephen. It was a time of awful pain and misery—but if he came to take me back as his wife, I would go to him. If he ever can, I have promised that I will.”

With all his knowledge of her, Joyce was taken aback by her simple candour.

“If that is so, why on earth shrink from reconsidering, now, his former offer?” he asked, exceedingly puzzled at her point of view.

“You tell me what I ought to do, and I will do it,” said Yvonne.

“You must write to Everard.”

“Very well.”

“Then you need not have any fears at all for the future. It will be all so simple.”

“How can I thank you?” said Yvonne. “Oh, if I could only sing for you! But nothing will ever give me back my voice—I am a useless little creature. And you have been so good to me to-day. I shall never forget it all my life.”

But Joyce’s heart was at ebb-tide again. He rose soon, and took his hat and stick.

“There is no reason to thank me, Yvonne,” he said, with bitterness. “What I have done for you has cost me nothing—the cheapest of all services; I have only given you advice.”

Yvonne looked at him wistfully.

“If you talk like that, you will make me cry again.”

“Forgive me,” said Joyce. “I am a beast.”