She would have waited, stayed, rung, asked, have gone in, sat on the stairs.

What the day was the last of was probably, to her strained inner sense, the group of golden ones, of any occasion for seeing the hazy sunshine slant at that angle into the smelly shop, of any range of chances for his wishing still to repeat to her the two words she had in the Park scarcely let him bring out.

"See here--see here!"-- the sound of these two words had been with her perpetually; but it was in her ears to-day without mercy, with a loudness that grew and grew.

What was it they then expressed?
what was it he had wanted her to see?
She seemed, whatever it was, perfectly to see it now--to see that if she should just chuck the whole thing, should have a great and beautiful courage, he would somehow make everything up to her.

When the clock struck five she was on the very point of saying to Mr.Buckton that she was deadly ill and rapidly getting worse.