"My father found one of his stories and read it. It was then that he told Basil that he could not stay if he continued in his course. My father really didn't mean that he was to go away, but he took him at his word. Then we tried to find him again and again. His going away killed my father. All the clues led nowhere. We didn't hear anything about him till he was dead and buried. Then my father died." Mrs. Lister became excited. "I feel as though it would kill me. I thought at the time I couldn't live. Everything came at once." "But, mother, it is all so long ago!" "It is all as plain and dreadful as though it were yesterday. I have been afraid for twenty years that people would find out about Basil, that they would put this and that together. I have thought of Mrs. Scott finding it out and of how she would talk and talk and of all the tradespeople knowing, and--" "But, my darling, what could they know?" Mrs. Lister seemed suddenly to repent her vehemence. "That he was alienated from us," said she. "Isn't that enough? And I shall never get over grieving for him. If he had done as my father wished he might have been here with us yet, and not be lying in his grave!" "But he did live intensely. He probably got more happiness out of a day than ordinary mortals get out of a month. And you must learn not to grieve. It's unnatural. You have Richard and all your friends--and me!" Mrs. Lister was slow to take comfort. For several days she did little but wander round the quiet house. It dawned upon her presently that the house was unusually quiet and that she had seen little of Richard since Commencement. In the thought of him she found at last her accustomed consolation. He was normal; he would give her no hours of misery as Basil had. He would do just what she wanted him to do--he was _darling_--even to think of him healed. But where was Richard? Probably at Thomasina's. Mrs. Lister put on her bonnet and walked thither. Richard was not there, and Thomasina in her trying way would talk of nothing but his musical talent. She had an annoying fashion of assuming that people agreed with her. When Mrs. Lister reached home, Richard had not come. During the absence of his wife, Dr. Lister had visited the third story and looked through some of Basil's belongings. In the bottom of his little trunk lay his books, his tiny Euripides and his Æschylus with their poor print and their many notes. How strange it was to think of these books as the pocket companions of a young man! How mad to pick quarrels with any young man who went thus companioned!