A bright fire was burning in the room.

He looked at her shyly and half in doubt, drew up an arm-chair to the hearth, and left her there.
His manner brought back to her the days of their engagement when that room had been their refuge.

Not that they had often been alone together.
She could count the times on the fingers of one hand, the times when Edith was too ill to be wheeled into her room.

It had been nearly always in Edith's room that she had seen him, surrounded by all the feminine devices, the tender trivialities that were part of the moving pathos of the scene.

She had so associated him with his sister that it had been hard for her to realise that he had any separate life of his own.