A sensation of chilliness, of loneliness was about her, and when she came to her door she entered her room abruptly, as if she feared the dead man. And, standing in the middle of her room watching the yellow flame of the candle, she thought of him. She could see him pale and stark, covered by a sheet, the watchers on either side. She would like to go to him, but she feared the lonely passage. And she sat watching the bright sky; and, without belief or even hope, she wondered if Harold's spirit were far beyond those stars sitting with God in some auroral heaven amid aureoled saints and choirs of seraphim. But this dream did not detain her thoughts. They turned into remembrances of a kind-hearted city man who went to town every day by the ten minutes past nine train, who had taken the world as he found it, and who, unlike her, had never sought to be what he was not. Then her thoughts moved away from herself, and she feared that she had been a great trial to him. But regrets were vain, there was no use regretting; he was gone--she would hear no more of the ten minutes past nine. He would go to the city no more; and in a few years he would be forgotten by every one but her. How unutterably sad, how unspeakably sad, how unthinkingly sad it all seemed, and, oh, how commonplace. In a few years she, too, would be forgotten; in a few years they would lie in the same ground forgotten; it would be the same as if they had not lived at all.... How sad, how infinitely sad, how unthinkingly sad, and yet how common-place. But what would happen in the few years that would intervene before she joined him in the earth! What? She had four thousand a year to dispose of as she pleased, to do with as she liked, but this fortune meant nothing to her. She had always had as much money as she had wanted. His purse had always been hers. Money did not bring happiness, at least it had not brought her happiness. And less now than ever would it bring her happiness, for she desired nothing; she had lived her life, there was nothing for her to do, she had tried and failed. She had tried everything, except marriage. Should she try that? She had promised Alfred that she would marry him. He had proposed to her that afternoon. One man dying, another proposing to marry. That was life. Every day the same situation. At this very moment, the same, and the same will continue till the end of time. What is it that forces us to live? There is nothing to live for except trouble and misery, and yet we must live. What forces us to live? What makes us live? Enigma. Nature, whatever that may be, forces us to live, wills that we should live. 'And I, too, like millions of others must live. But how am I to live? How am I to fill my life? If we live we must find something to live for. Take a studio and paint bad pictures? I couldn't. Go back to Paris and start a salon? I wonder!'