Gordon stood drumming with his fingers on the table-cloth. A sudden impulse of a sentimental kind had persuaded him to spend his last week of bachelorhood alone in the familiar privacy of this spot, and he had obeyed it on the instant, thoughtlessly it now appeared to him. He might have foreseen the likelihood of Hawke's presence. After all, however, it could not matter. It would be, perhaps, a little awkward if they met, though, indeed, it need not be even that. Their actual rivalry had ended with the announcement of his engagement two years ago. Hawke could gain no end by sustaining the feud. There was, in truth, no reason why they should not shake hands over the matter. So he argued to himself, desire pointing the argument and stifling certain uneasy reflections as to the tenacity of Hawke's nature. He sat down to resume his breakfast. The third member of the trio which for years had made the farmhouse the resort during Easter vacations claimed Mrs. Jackson's attention. "And Mr. Arkwright?" she asked. "He's dead," Gordon replied after a pause. "He died last year in Switzerland. It was an accident. I was with him at the time." He spoke with spasmodic jerks and ended with something like a sigh of relief. But if Mrs. Jackson loved marriages, she hankered after violent deaths, and so, while she expressed unbounded pity, she insisted upon details. Gordon submitted reluctantly. "It happened in the Oberland," he said, and Mrs. Jackson took a chair. "We were coming down a mountain towards the evening--Arkwright, myself, and a guide. We chanced to be late. The descent was new to us, and knowing that we should not get off the snow before dark we looked out for a spot to camp on. We came to a little plateau of rock just as the night was falling, and determined to remain there. The guide had a bottle of wine left out of our provisions. We had kept it back purposely." Gordon paused for a moment and then went on again with a certain deliberateness of speech as though the episode fascinated him in the telling of it. "Arkwright volunteered to draw the cork. The neck of the bottle burst and cut into his arm. It severed the main artery just above the wrist. I sent the guide down to the valley, but, of course, no help came until the morning. He was dead then." "And you stayed with him all the time?" "Yes!" said Gordon, and he rose from the table. Mrs. Jackson, however, failed to take the hint. She wanted a description of his feelings during that night of watching, and she persisted until she had obtained it. "I wonder you can bear to speak about it at all!" she said almost reproachfully when he had finished.