The story had ceased, but Maggie neither answered nor came. He stepped to the dining-room door with a curious sense of apprehension. There was a touch of surprise in his tone. 'Maggie!' She looked round and on her face was the quick and strange reflection of his bewilderment. Yet she looked beyond him, through him, as if he had not been there. The boy John was still staring into the fire, folded deep in the robe of enthrallment his mother had made. As if from the hushed heart of it, he said,-- 'What did you hear, mother?' She gave him a startled glance, and then she smiled upon him, tenderly, warmly. 'Only the wind outside, dear child. It is a rainy and windy night.' She looked again toward the door of the room. 'Maggie!' Such was the sudden torture and fear in his breast, he could scarcely lift his voice. He put one hand to his head and stepped nearer his wife. As if to find tranquillity in a moment of nervousness, she rested her soft glance on Alicia, the child of delicate hands and delicate thoughts. Robbie, the importunate youngest, leaned against his mother with heavy and troubled eyes. 'I thought I heard something, mother,' he said. She bent over him, visibly trembling. 'What did you think it was, darling?' she asked. 'I thought it was the rain hitting the window and trying to get in.' She laughed and rose uneasily from her chair, and taking the child in her arms, she walked up and down before the friendly fire. For a long time there was no sound in the room except the vague sound of wind, of flame, and of Maggie's footsteps. Suddenly Robbie gave a little cry from her shoulder. 'Why doesn't father come?' The man rushed toward his wife to clasp her and the child in his arms, crying,-- 'O Maggie!' She sank to her chair, trembling and stroking the head of her child with fearful compassion. 'O heavy mystery! Is this life,' he cried, 'or death?' He stretched out his arms in vain. The impassable gulf lay between them. Then, as he turned away from her, the walls of the house grew heavy upon him, the fire sent forth a smothering heat, and incomprehensible, unendurable became the spectacle of human grief. He went toward the door. Hesitating he looked back again. Robbie's face was buried in her breast; her eyes were deep and dark with the half-guessed truth. There came a sound at the door, that caused Maggie to start piteously. He forgot his desire to be free in his desire to clasp her again and console her. She left the children and went unhesitating and pale to answer the summons, he hovering beside her. What a flower she looked and how fragilely shaken, like the rain-beaten crocuses in the grass! As the door opened he saw two men standing in the dark and wet. For a moment neither spoke. One looked at the other, and broke out,-- 'You tell her, for God's sake!'