Why remember any more? Why torture himself with further proof? He was quite soundly enough convinced. He saw that he ought to have guessed it long ago. He scarcely even blamed them—they were dead. He blamed himself: himself for having so often asked her to have him; himself for not guessing; himself for having been a fool, and for having been _old_. Yes, there had been the mischief—he had been too old to understand, and it was hard he had not been too old to love. His anger was slowly dying out, but with the fire of his wrath was dying also the fire of his life. He felt very old. Milly had been taken from him, but Daisy had been left, and she had made life new for him—she had made him young. But Milly had gone from him afresh to-day, and she had taken Daisy away with her. There was no one left to him, and he knew that he was too old ever to begin caring for anything again—ever to make another clutch at life in its fulness. His appointed days he would have to run, and to that end he must needs work that he might eat; but the savour of work was gone, for the savour of life was gone—with his child. He sat there beside the dead hearth and faced it all out, while the cool dawn crept slowly into the sky behind the downs, first putting out the stars in the blue-black heaven, then softly washing it with faintest grey, then slowly streaking it and flushing it with violet and with rose and with gold. Rising out of the plain, a red-roofed town caught the first of the morning light, its buildings clustered thick on a steep hill crowned by an ancient church that was pinnacled upon its summit, its feet girdled by the pale purple mists of the marsh which the sun would soon pierce and disperse. Many a time had he seen that crown take the earliest wave of the morning as though it were the first thing that the new day looked at, but he had never noticed it before as he noticed it now, remembering that it was in that very church he had wed his wife; in that same town he had been wont to take his little maid to buy her new shoes, or the stuff for her best frocks. But the dawn was waxing into daybreak; the clouds had vanished with the night; the town was reddening, the marsh was yellowing, the river was pearling silver-white: the sun rose. The world was bright and light as he had foreseen it: full of hope, full of work, full also of prying curiosity and eager, cruel cheerfulness. The day was here, darker for him now than the night—and he knew that he must face it. He went to the little recess behind which was the child’s cot and drew aside the curtains.