It occurred to him that the house was very still. No sound from the kitchen or overhead. He didn’t care, though. He didn’t stir until it was quite dark; then he got up to find a match for his wretched cigar. It was odd, after all,--no one about, no lights anywhere. His indifference was mere bravado now; he wouldn’t let himself call out.... When at last he did go upstairs he found an envelope addressed to himself on his bureau. “My own dearest Lionel: I have gone away for just a little while, because I have a plan to help us all. Stay where you are, and I shall be able to send you some money very soon. Don’t worry; everything will soon be all right, and we shall be all together again. Take care of yourself, dearest. Your loving, loving wife, Minnie. P.S.--There is a delicious meat pie for you in the ice box.” He read it again, and still it didn’t stir his indifference. He ate the meat pie, an unusually pretentious dish which must have cost Minnie much time and trouble; he sat on the porch for a while and at last went to bed, to fall asleep easily. Minnie and Sandra gone? Very well; they couldn’t be any worse off anywhere else. He waked up just before dawn, with a shock of realisation. Minnie lost too! Everything gone! He began to think of what the poor little woman had suffered and endured, of her patience, her loyalty to him. He remembered her, working so anxiously, so blindly, not questioning, not complaining, trying her poor best to give him what comfort she could. And _she_ had had nothing. He wondered how in Heaven’s name she had lived. He thought of the long days she had spent with her poor little child, the child she so loved, and whom she had had to see hungry and ragged. Her utter loneliness, her pitiful faith in him, her hope of finding in him all of life and happiness. IV For months he didn’t know where she had gone. She wrote to him loyally and sent him money, but she had the letters posted in New York, and he could imagine no way of tracing her. With the money she sent him and what he earned, he managed to keep alive, and he stayed on in the miserable little house, as she had told him. He was so sunk in wretchedness that he no longer suffered. He sometimes had a violent longing for the sound of Minnie’s pleasant voice, or to see her solicitous, kindly face, but his chief thought, his chief concern was his own health. He was ill; he knew it; he had that mysterious certainty of imminent danger which has nothing to do with symptoms. Creditors hounded him, until he grew desperate. They wouldn’t wait; he couldn’t expect them to; he couldn’t very well expect them to have implicit faith in Minnie’s vague promise that everything would soon be all right. And that was all he could offer. The house was a pig-sty, an offense, and he didn’t care. For days at a time he didn’t even shave. He used to look at himself in the mirror and laugh at the blue stubble on his haggard face, his uncut hair, his frayed necktie and dirty collar.