The publican stood at the window with his back to the bed. The husband, like one condemned but on the point of starting away, stood by the bedside staring in horror at his wife, whose dilated grey eyes, nearly all black now, watched him wearily, as if she were looking at something a long way off. Going exceedingly pale, he jerked up his head and stared at the wall over the pillows. There was a little coloured picture of a bird perched on a bell, and a nest among ivy leaves beneath. It appealed to him, made him wonder, roused a feeling of childish magic in him. They were wonderfully fresh, green ivy leaves, and nobody had seen the nest among them save him. Then suddenly he looked down again at the face on the bed, to try and recognise it. He knew the white brow and the beautiful clear eyebrows. That was his wife, with whom he had passed his youth, flesh of his flesh, his, himself. Then those tired eyes, which met his again from a long way off, disturbed him until he did not know where he was. Only the sunken cheeks, and the mouth that seemed to protrude now were foreign to him, and filled him with horror. It seemed he lost his identity. He was the young husband of the woman with the clear brows; he was the married man fighting with her whose eyes watched him, a little indifferently, from a long way off; and he was a child in horror of that protruding mouth. There came a crackling sound of her voice. He knew she had consumption of the throat, and braced himself hard to bear the noise. “What was it, Maud?” he asked in panic. Then the broken, crackling voice came again. He was too terrified of the sound of it to hear what was said. There was a pause. “You’ll take Winnie?” the publican’s voice interpreted from the window. “Don’t you bother, Maud, I’ll take her,” he said, stupefying his mind so as not to understand. He looked curiously round the room. It was not a bad bedroom, light and warm. There were many medicine bottles aggregated in a corner of the washstand—and a bottle of Three Star brandy, half full. And there were also photographs of strange people on the chest of drawers. It was not a bad room. Again he started as if he were shot. She was speaking. He bent down, but did not look at her. “Be good to her,” she whispered. When he realised her meaning, that he should be good to their child when the mother was gone, a blade went through his flesh. “I’ll be good to her, Maud, don’t you bother,” he said, beginning to feel shaky. He looked again at the picture of the bird. It perched cheerfully under a blue sky, with robust, jolly ivy leaves near. He was gathering his courage to depart. He looked down, but struggled hard not to take in the sight of his wife’s face. “I s’ll come again, Maud,” he said. “I hope you’ll go on all right. Is there anything as you want?”