s back to the house and the gaping windows, and Wemyss, spying it

ger-was he real? Was anything real? Let him tell her whatever it was he wanted to tell her, and she would listen, and get him his glas

er,' she said when

down,' sa

her hand go. It dropped on the

her at the sun on the grass beyond the shade of the mulberry tree, at a mass of huge fuchsia bushes a little way off. 'I've been go

uld come in with the hot water and wake her to the usual cheerful day. The man sitting beside her,-he seemed rather vivid for a dream, it was true; so detailed, with his flushed face and the perspiration on his forehead, besides the feel of his big warm hand a moment ago and the small puffs of heat that

ily. It wasn't a

rave profile. How old was she? Eighteen? Twenty-eight? Impossible to tell exactly with hair cut like that, but young anyhow compared to him; ver

ecause you're a stranger, and it may help you with your own trouble, because whatever you may suffer I'm suff

Lucy. Things didn't happen like this

it wasn't a dream. No dream could be so sol

tormented voice t

ss,' she repe

on her. She didn't m

er unmoved. 'My God,' he went on, again wiping his forehead, but as fast as he wiped it more

name on poster

ally, her ear attentive only to the sounds

newspapers here?

'We've been settling in. I don't think we'

can tell you the real version,' he said, 'without you're being already filled up with the monstrous suggestions that we

est?' rep

looked at him. 'Has your troub

nything else would reduce

er voice came a different expression, something living,

wife,' sa

, at the thought of all he had endured, and turned his back on h

little on both hands. 'Tell me about

th many interjections of astonishment that such a ghastly cala

mprehendingly and gr

do with-well, with calami

ing forward to a glorious time of peaceful doing nothing after months of London, just lying about in a punt and reading and smoking a

was too grievous to

to recover. 'I think that would almost be better. One wo

all,' cried Wemys

, roused now altogether. It was

etween both his, a

fore; there was a flagged terrace along that side of the house, the side the library was on and all the principal rooms; and all of a sudden there was a great flash of shadow be

h don't--'

amazed horror. 'Fallen out of the top room of the house her sitting-room because of the view-it was in a

don't

f my head? And forced to be by myself-forced into retirement for what the world cons

and, he gripp

aid, 'I believe I'd have pitched myself over the

Lucy, to whom poor Wemyss's misfortune seemed mo

day when the coverings were going to be dropped and one would see it was death after all, that it had been death all the time, death pretending, death waiting. Her father, so full of love and interests

one of high anger at the wanton, outrageous cruelty of fate. 'It was a very low one, and the floor was slippery. Oak. Every floor in my house is po

she do, what could she say to help him, t

mblingly stroking his hand, 'at the inquest, as though it hadn't all been awful en

ath?' echoed Luc

an accident or

e on

ici

h-

n her brea

it wa

one for her, no troubles, nothing on her mind, nothing wrong with her health

is free hand. His voice w

y did th

You know what servants are. It upset some of the jury. You know juries are made up of anybody and everybody-butcher, baker, and candle-stick-maker-quite uneducated m

you,' breathed Lucy, her eyes on hi

papers last week,' said Wemyss, more quietly. It

he said, touched with compunction; nothing that had happened to her could be so horrible as what had happened to him,

' she breathed, her horr

certainly was; her father had probably died as fathers did, in the usual way in his bed-before he could answer, the two women came out of the house, and with small discreet st

e and hesitated, and then came across the g

o you,' said Wemyss, for Lucy was

ed and lo

side, her hands folded, her face pulled into a litt

quite ready, miss