“Oh!” she said at last, holding his hand very tightly, “I'm sorry, I'm sorry--” He had seen, of course, from the beginning that this business must be told her, but his one desire was to hurry through it, to get it done and banished, once and for all, from their conversation. “It happened,” he went on gruffly, “quite suddenly. I wasn't in any way prepared for it. She just went off to Paris, after leaving a letter. With the death of the boy and the failure of my book--it just seemed the last blow--the end.” “The end--at thirty?” she said softly, almost to herself, “surely, no--with the pluck that you've got--and the health. What are you going to do--about it all?” “To do?” he smiled bitterly. “Do you suppose that I will ask her to come back to me? Do you suppose that I want her back? No, that's all done with. All that life's finished.” Then he added slowly, not looking at her as he spoke--“I'm going to live with my father.” He remembered, clearly enough, that he had told her many things about his early life at Scaw House. He knew that she must now, as he flung that piece of information at her, have recalled to herself all those things that he had told her. He felt rather than perceived, the agitation that seized her at those last words of his. Her hand slowly withdrew from his, it fell back on to her lap and he felt her whole body draw, as it were, into itself, as though it had come into contact with some terror, some unexplained alarm. But she only said: “And what will you do at home, Peter?” He answered her with a kind of bravado--“Oh, write, I suppose. I went up to see the old man yesterday. Changed enormously since the old days. I found him quite genial, seemed very anxious that I should come. I expect he's a bit lonely.” She did not answer this and there was a long awkward pause. He knew, as they sat there, in troubled silence that his conscience was awake. It had seemed to be so quiescent through his visit yesterday; it had been drugged and dimmed all these last restless days. But now it was up again. He was conscious that it was not, after all, going to be so easy a thing to abandon all his energies, his militancies, the dominant vigorous panoply of his soul. He knew as he sat there, that this sick shadow of a woman would not let him go like that. He said good-bye to her for the moment, but, as he left the room he knew that Scaw House would not see him again until he had done everything for her that there was to be done. II That evening he saw the doctor who attended on her. He was a nice young fellow, intelligent, eager, with a very real individual liking for his patient. “Ah! she's splendid--brave and plucky beyond anything I've ever seen; so full of fun that you'd think that she'd an idea that another three weeks would see her as well as ever again--whereas she knows as well as I do that another three weeks may easily see her out of the world altogether!” “There's no hope then?” asked Peter.