I trust that you will not hesitate, Mr. Burton. We
are most anxious--indeed we are most anxious, are we not, Edith?--to
have you come."
Burton turned his head and glanced toward the girl. She had raised her
veil. Her eyes met his, met his question and evaded it. She studied
the pattern of the carpet. When she looked up again, her cheeks were
pink.
"Mr. Burton will be very welcome," she said.
There was a short silence in the room. The sunshine fell across the
dusty room in a long, quivering shaft. Outside, the branches of an elm
tree swinging in the wind cast a shadow across the floor. The
professor, with folded arms, sat alert and expectant. Burton, pale and
shrunken with the labors of the last ten days, looked out of his burning
eyes at the girl. For a single moment she had raised her head, had met
his fierce inquiry with a certain wistful pathos, puzzling, an
incomplete sentiment. Now she, too, was sitting as though in an
attitude of waiting. Burton felt his heart suddenly leap. What might
lie beyond the wall was of no account. He was a man with only a few
brief months to live, as he had come to understand life. He would
follow the eternal philosophy. He would do as the others and make the
best of them.
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