He found her door closed and upon listening with his ear against the frame, felt confident that he heard a gentle breathing. He opened the door, holding the knob so that it should make no noise, and looked into the darkened room. When his vision reached the bedspread, turned down over the bed's foot, he withdrew. What Mary Alcestis needed was sleep. She needed also absence from these familiar scenes. He determined that he would propose a journey, much as he disliked leaving his pleasant home in summer. They might go and bring Richard home, all returning by way of Niagara Falls; they might even take him directly to New York and see him settled there. By next summer he would look back on his miseries with astonishment at himself. Youth was so resilient; it changed and forgot, thank God! Tiptoeing downstairs Dr. Lister ate his dinner, still more reassured by 'Manda's statement that her mistress had given orders early in the morning that she was not to be disturbed. As he sat alone at his meal, he thought of Basil who had so often sat here looking over the broad meadow toward the creek where he, like Richard, had fished when he was a little boy. How pleasant it was to be safe and alive, with friends, bodily comforts, good books; how dreadful to be struck down, cut off from life and sunshine and work. How sad to be forgotten, to have no place in the memory of man, even in the minds of one's contemporaries. His thoughts turned from Basil's life to his own. What had he done to be remembered except by a few persons connected with him by ties of blood? A few short texts edited, a few boys and girls taught a little Greek! Alas, during the most of his adult years he had been satisfied to get merely his academic work done and to make no further effort. This house, he believed, with all its soft comforts had been bad for him; he had had so many more plans, so many high ambitions when he was a struggling young man, before Mary Alcestis had begun to pillow his existence. He saw once more Basil in this quiet house. How he must have filled it with unrest and discontent! When he had finished his dinner, he went to his wife's door. Again he was certain of the breathing which was restoring her to herself. As he descended the stairs he heard a strange and startling sound, a loud, thin twang metallic and musical. He had forgotten that the old piano gave occasional expression to a complaint over the misery and dreariness of age and felt for an instant his flesh creep. Then, smiling at himself, he went on to his study.