--"They said he was getting better. Instead of that he is dead,--he is dead, and I shot him; I lifted the pistol and fired. At the time it didn't seem wrong. But this is what it means to kill, I suppose;--this awful agony. --"I have never been one of the afraid kind. I wish now that I had been; then this wouldn't have happened; the baby might have been horribly hurt, Cicely too; but at least I shouldn't have been a murderer. For if you kill you _are_ a murderer, no matter whether the person you kill is good or bad, or what you do it for; you have killed some one, you have made his life come to a sudden stop, and for that you must take the responsibility. --"Oh, God! it is too dreadful! I cannot bear it. Sometimes, when I have been unhappy, I have waked and found it was only a dream; couldn't _this_ be a dream? --"I was really going to tell, I was going to tell Cicely. But I thought I would wait until he was well--as every one said he would be soon--so that she wouldn't hate me quite so much. If she should die without coming to her senses, I shouldn't be able to tell her. --"Hypocrite! even to myself. In reality I don't want her to come to her senses; I have sat here for days, afraid to leave her, watching every moment lest she should begin to talk rationally. For then I should have to tell her; and she would tell Paul. Oh, I cannot have him know--I _cannot._" Made stupid by her misery, she sat gazing at the floor, her eyes fixed, her lips slightly apart. She was exhausted; for the same thoughts had besieged her ever since she had read the despatch, "Morrison died this morning,"--an unending repetition of exactly the same sentences, constantly following each other, and constantly beginning again; even in sleep they continued, like a long nightmare, so that she woke weeping. And now without a moment's respite, while she sat there with her eyes on the carpet, the involuntary recital began anew: "I am a murderer, it is a murderer who is sitting here. If people only knew!" "They may rail at this life; from the hour I began it I've found it a life full of kindness and bliss; And until you can show me some happier planet, More social, more gay, I'll content me with this," chanted Cicely, sweetly. "The song of last Christmas at Romney," Eve's thoughts went on. "Oh, how changed I am since then--how changed! That night I thought only of my brother. Now I have almost forgotten him;--Jack, do you care? All I think of is Paul, Paul, Paul. How beautiful it was in that gray-green wood! But what am I dreaming about? How can the person who killed his brother be anything to him? --"Once he said--he told me himself--'I care for Ferdie more than for anything in the world.' It's Ferdie I have killed.