GOOD-BYE! A chesterfield couch had been pulled well into the bay window of one of Kitty's big rooms so that Nan, from the nest of cushions amid which she lay, could see all that was passing in the street below.

The warm May sunshine poured into the room, revealing with painful clarity the changes which the last three months had wrought in her.

Never at any time robust in appearance, she seemed the slenderest, frailest thing as she lay there, the delicate angles of her face sharpened by fever and weakness, her cheeks so hollowed that the violet-blue eyes looked almost amazingly big and wide-open in her small face.
Kitty was sitting near her, a half-knitted jumper lying across her knees, the inevitable cigarette in her hand, while Barry, who had returned from Cannes some weeks ago--entirely unperturbed at finding his new system a complete "wash-out"-- leaned, big and debonair, against the window.
"When are we going to Mallow ?" asked Nan fretfully.

"I'm so tired of staring at those houses across the way." Barry turned his head and regarded the houses opposite reflectively.
"They're not inspiring, I admit," he answered, "even though many of them _are_ the London habitations of belted earls and marquises." "We'll go to Mallow as soon as you like," interposed Kitty.

"I think you're quite fit to stand the journey now." "Fit?
Of course I'm fit.