Tom had passed the night of a thousand years; it comes once or even twice in a lifetime. He was looking very old and haggard. When Gladys came into the room he winced as if he had touched a snake. It was a very awkward meeting. Tom would have gone out of the room and said nothing, but there was breakfast—and the servants. By-and-bye there was only breakfast, and Gladys sitting where Mary used to sit. She was thinking that at least he might have shaved, and wondering if she dared to speak to him. It was very hot and still. “Did you know that Mary had had a hæmorrhage before?” he asked in the dangerously level tones of passion curbed. Gladys burst into tears. “How can you speak of her in that heartless way, Tom?” she cried. He gave a queer little sound that might have been a laugh. “Answer me,” he said. The question was how much did he know, and what was the safest lie? He saved her the trouble. “Very well, you did know, then! Now how long has this been going on?” “It was easy enough to keep it from you, Tom!” she said, with the brutality of a weak thing cornered. “You never took the trouble to find out. Poor Mary made me promise not to tell you. She told me first in England that her temperature rose every night, but that she didn’t intend to make herself an invalid for that. She said you were the sort of man who hated invalids.” Tom broke a paper-cutter he had been playing with on the table. “I don’t know how many hæmorrhages she had—not very many; certainly not one for a long time——” “Certainly not one yesterday morning,” he interrupted slowly, a little pause between each word. “Before you went to the picnic?” Gladys looked desperately at the paper-cutter. There was something in the psalms about a green bay-tree that occurred to her, not of course in connection with herself. “No, she never said so. She wanted particularly to go to the picnic; she said (who was it that said women are no inventors?) that she would be so dull without you. I tried to persuade her not to go, but she would——” “I wonder,” said Tom meditatively, “how many lies you have been telling me? Don’t get angry, it really isn’t worth while, and it doesn’t matter in the least, you know, only you had better save some for your old age. You can pack your things, as we are going home next week.” He rose drearily from the table and made his way out of the room; he cared so very little about anything. He felt as physically tired as after a forced march. An endless expanse of days and months and years passed before his eyes—there seemed so much time now.