It was so quiet it might have been two o’clock in the morning. It was so quiet you heard the boards creak and pop as one does in a house in the country. I smoked the whole cigarette and stabbed the end into my saucer before Mouse turned round and came back to the table. “Isn’t Dick being rather a long time?” “You are very tired. I expect you want to go to bed,” I said kindly. (And pray don’t mind me if you do, said my mind.) “But isn’t he being a very long time?” she insisted. I shrugged. “He is, rather.” Then I saw she looked at me strangely. She was listening. “He’s been gone ages,” she said, and she went with little light steps to the door, opened it, and crossed the passage into his room. I waited. I listened too, now. I couldn’t have borne to miss a word. She had left the door open. I stole across the room and looked after her. Dick’s door was open, too. But—there wasn’t a word to miss. You know I had the mad idea that they were kissing in that quiet room—a long comfortable kiss. One of those kisses that not only puts one’s grief to bed, but nurses it and warms it and tucks it up and keeps it fast enfolded until it is sleeping sound. Ah! how good that is. It was over at last. I heard some one move and tip-toed away. It was Mouse. She came back. She felt her way into the room carrying the letter for me. But it wasn’t in an envelope; it was just a sheet of paper and she held it by the corner as though it was still wet. Her head was bent so low—so tucked in her furry collar that I hadn’t a notion—until she let the paper fall and almost fell herself on to the floor by the side of the bed, leaned her cheek against it, flung out her hands as though the last of her poor little weapons was gone and now she let herself be carried away, washed out into the deep water. Flash! went my mind. Dick has shot himself, and then a succession of flashes while I rushed in, saw the body, head unharmed, small blue hole over temple, roused hotel, arranged funeral, attended funeral, closed cab, new morning coat. . . . I stooped down and picked up the paper and would you believe it—so ingrained is my Parisian sense of _comme il faut_—I murmured “pardon” before I read it. “MOUSE, MY LITTLE MOUSE, It’s no good. It’s impossible. I can’t see it through. Oh, I do love you. I do love you. Mouse, but I can’t hurt her. People have been hurting her all her life. I simply dare not give her this final blow. You see, though she’s stronger than both of us, she’s so frail and proud. It would kill her—kill her, Mouse. And, oh God, I can’t kill my mother! Not even for you. Not even for us. You do see that—don’t you.