On the table near her lay a plate of boiled rice piled high in a snowy pyramid.

He saw that it had not been touched.
"Why, child," he said, a sudden new anxiety at his heart "you have had nothing to eat.

You're not ill ?" She roused herself a little, and a very faint colour crept into her white cheeks.

"No, dear, only tired--too tired to be hungry," she told him.

"That rice is for you." He sat down beside her with a sound that was almost a groan.