“It is from your father, but he is giving it to you at the moment when he is no longer being your father and has begun to love you as a woman. Well, I guess you’d better cling to it, Jane. You’ll need it, God knows. If you want a name for it call it the ‘Jewel of Life,’” he said and then, as though he had already forgotten the incident he put his hand on her arm and pushing her gently through the door closed it behind her. IX There still remained something for John Webster to do in the room. When his daughter had gone he picked up his bag and went out into the hallway as though about to leave without more words to the wife, who still sat on the floor with her head hanging down, as though unaware of any life about her. When he had got into the hallway and had closed the door he set his bag down and came back. As he stood within the room, with the knob still held in his hand, he heard a noise on the floor below. “That’s Katherine. What’s she doing up at this time of the night?” he thought. He took out his watch and went nearer the burning candles. It was fifteen minutes to three. “We’ll catch the early morning train at four all right,” he thought. There was his wife, or rather the woman who for so long a time had been his wife, on the floor at the foot of the bed. Now her eyes were looking directly at him. Still the eyes had nothing to say. They did not even plead with him. There was in them something that was hopelessly puzzled. If the events that had transpired in the room that night had torn the lid off the well she carried about within herself she had managed to clamp it back on again. Now perhaps the lid would never again stir from its place. John Webster felt peculiarly like he fancied an undertaker might feel on being called at night into the presence of a dead body. “The devil! Such fellows perhaps had no such feelings.” Quite unconscious of what he was doing he took out a cigarette and lit it. He felt strangely impersonal; like one watching a rehearsal for some play in which one is not particularly interested. “It’s a time of death all right,” he thought. “The woman is dying. I can’t say whether or not her body is dying but there’s something within her that has already died.” He wondered if he had killed her, but had no sense of guilt in the matter. He went to stand at the foot of the bed and, putting his hand on the railing, leaned over to look at her. It was a time of darkness. A shiver ran through his body and dark thoughts like flocks of blackbirds flew across the field of his fancy.