Jimmy stood waiting; he knew there must be something else to be said; he wondered, in view of what was in his own mind, what he might have to say himself. Mr. Purdue stood nervously rubbing one hand over the back of the other, and blinking his eyes at the fire; it almost seemed as if he tried to weep, but had forgotten the trick of it. "When Charlie came to me--he spoke of a woman--some woman he must marry," went on the old man. "I would not listen to that--and I should have listened, I suppose. I suppose you know nothing--nothing about her?" "Yes--I know everything," replied Jimmy, steadily. "I know the woman well; she will be provided for." He did not mean it quite in that way--did not intend, perhaps, to put the statement so crudely; but in face of this new and strange situation he seemed to be acting in a new and strange fashion. Proud, in a curious sense, of what he was to do, he yet had in him that chivalry which would make him keep secret Moira's name, even while he boasted of what he was to do for her. While the old man stared at him, he repeated that phrase he had used. "She will be provided for," he said again; and he said it sternly. "I'm glad," replied the other, with something of a sigh of relief. "I'm glad he thought of that--at the last." Mr. Purdue asked but a few questions after that; and then set out to do all that was to be done for the dead man. There was to be an inquest; and after that the father had decided to take the son back to the place where he had lived as a boy. Jimmy was not, of course, concerned in that, and the two men parted presently; the one to go back to the solitary life he had lived so long--the other to step forward into the new life that was so strangely opening for him. Always with that feeling in his mind of the great thing he was doing, Jimmy decided to do it very completely; he would not go near Alice again, nor would he reply to her note. The time was coming when he could stand before her, as he had already suggested, and would let her know of this thing he had done; the time when he would very beautifully, as he felt, go out of her presence for ever, leaving an ineffaceable memory behind him, to be treasured by her while she lived. He was hugging that thought to himself, and was deciding that he would go and see Moira, and tell her what her fate was to be; and he had lingered over it a little until the day had grown dark; when he was thrown a little off his balance by Moira coming to him. He was sitting at his desk--not working, but with the circle of light from his lamp falling upon his brooding face, when she came softly in, and stood within the door, looking at him. Just so once before she had seen him, on a night when he was to have spoken a word to her that should have changed the current of their lives; just so she saw him now, for a moment, before he moved, and rose, and came towards her.