It will have food, Margret." She drew away the hand he grasped, and stood back in the shadow.
"What is it to me ?"--in the same measured voice.
Holmes wiped the cold drops from his forehead, a sort of shudder in his powerful frame.

He stood a moment looking into the fire, his head dropped on his arm.
"Let it be so," he said at last, quietly.

"The worn old heart can gnaw on itself a little longer.

I have no mind to whimper over pain." Something that she saw on the dark sardonic face, as the red gleams lighted it, made her start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent.

He had not seen the movement,--or, if he saw, did not heed it.