"What do you mean by that, doctor?"
The doctor sighed again.
"If the inference is not clear," he said, "I'm afraid that I cannot
explain. But I'll try to keep everyone from the room."
She nodded her thanks, and went on; but passing the mirror in the hall
the sight of her face made her stop abruptly. There was no vestige of
colour in it; and the shadow beneath her eyes made them seem inhumanly
large and deep. The bright hair, to be sure, waved over her head and
coiled on her neck, but it was like a futile shaft of sunlight falling
on a dreary moor in winter. She went on thoughtfully to the door of the
living-room but there she paused again with her hand upon the knob; and
while she stood there she remembered herself as she had been only a few
months before, with the colour flushing in her face and a continual
light in her eyes. There had been little need for thinking then. One had
only to let the wind and the sun strike on one, and live. Then, in a
quiet despair, she said to herself: "As I am--I must win or lose--as I
am!" and she opened the door and stepped in.
She had been cold with fear and excitement when she entered the room to
make her last stand for happiness, but once she was in, it was not so
hard. Dan Barry lay on the couch at the far end of the room with his
hands thrown under his head, and he was smiling in a way which she well
knew; it had been a danger signal in the old days, and when he turned
his face and said good-morning to her, she caught that singular glimmer
of yellow which sometimes came up behind his eyes.
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