Then he said “Listen,” and he read the letter straight through. He repeated some of the phrases--“What you did on April 12.” “That shows that you don't care.... You are cruel and hard, Peter.... I am going to Jerry in Paris....” “Jerry--that's Cardillac, you know, Bobby. He's in Paris and she's going over to him because she can't stand me any more. She says I don't care about her. Isn't that funny, when I love her so much?” Bobby went to him, put his arm round his neck-- “Peter--dear--Peter--wait,” and then “Oh my God! we must stop her--” He drew himself away from Bobby's arm and, very unsteadily, went across the room and then stood against the farther wall, his head bent, motionless. “Stop her? Oh! no, Bobby. Stop her when she wants to go! I--” His voice wasn't Peter's voice, it was a thin monotonous voice like some one speaking at a great distance. Then it seemed that intelligence was flashed upon him. He lurched forward and with a great voice--as though he had been struck by some sudden agonising, immortal pain-- “Bobby--Bobby--My wife--Clare--” And at that instant Mrs. Rossiter was shown into the room. III The maid who opened the door had apparently some suspicion that “things were odd,” because she waited for a moment before she closed the door again, staring with wide eyes into the room, catching, perhaps, some hint from her master's white face that something terrible had occurred. It was obvious enough that Mrs. Rossiter had herself, during the last week, been in no easy mind. From the first glances at Peter and Bobby she seemed to understand everything, for, instantly, at that glimpse of their faces she became, for the first time in her life, perhaps, a personality, a figure, something defined and outlined. Her face was suddenly grey. She hesitated back against the door and, with her face on Peter, said in a whisper, to Bobby: “What--what has happened?” Bobby was not inclined to spare her. As an onlooker during these last months he felt that she, perhaps, was more guiltily responsible for the catastrophe than any other human being. “Clare,” he said, trying to fix her eyes. “She's gone off to Cardillac--to Paris.” Then he was himself held by the tragedy of those two faces. They faced each other across the room. Peter, with eyes and a mouth that were not his, eyes not sane, the eyes of no human being, mouth smiling, drawn tight like a razor's edge, with his hands spread out against the wall, watched Mrs. Rossiter. Mrs. Rossiter, at Bobby's words, had huddled up, suddenly broken, only her eyes, in her great foolish expressionless face, stung to an agony to which the rest of her body could not move. Her little soul--a tiny scrap of a thing in that vague prison of dull flesh--was suddenly wounded, desperately hurt by the only weapon that could ever have found it. “Clare!” that soul whispered, “not gone! It's not possible--it can't be--it can't be!” Peter, without moving, spoke to her.