They oughtn't to have done it. Dr. Charles would not have let them do it if he had been there. They should have waited. They might have known the choking and the retching would kill him. Catty ought to have known. Somewhere behind his eyes his life was leaking away through the torn net of the blood vessels, bleeding away over his brain, under his hair, under the tender, desperate fingers. She fixed her eyes on the pattern of the wall-paper. A purplish rose-bud in a white oval on a lavender ground. She clung to it as to some firm, safe centre of being. VII. The first day. The first evening. She went on hushed feet down the passage to let Dan in. The squeak of the latch picked at her taut nerves. She was glad of the cold air that rushed into the shut-up, soundless house, the sweet, cold air that hung about Dan's face and tingled in the curling frieze of his overcoat. She took him into the lighted dining-room where Roddy and Mamma waited for him. The callous fire crackled and spurted brightness. The table was set for Dan's supper. Dan knew that Papa was dead. He betrayed his knowledge by the cramped stare of his heavy, gentle eyes and by the shamed, furtive movements of his hands towards the fire. But that was all. His senses were still uncontaminated by _their_ knowledge. He had not seen Papa. He had not heard him. "What was it?" "Apoplexy." His eyes widened. Innocent, vague eyes that didn't see. Their minds fastened on Dan, to get immunity for themselves out of his unconsciousness. As long as they could keep him downstairs, in his innocence, their misery receded from them a little way. But Mamma would not have it so. She looked at Dan. Her eyes were dull and had no more thought in them. Her mouth quivered. They knew that she was going to say something. Their thread of safety tightened. In another minute it would snap. "Would you like to see him?" she said. They waited for Dan to come down from the room. He would not be the same Dan. He would have seen the white sheet raised by the high mound of the body and by the stiff, upturned feet, and he would have lifted the handkerchief from the face. He would be like them, and his consciousness would put a sharper edge on theirs. He would be afraid to look at them, as they were afraid to look at each other, because of what he had seen. VIII. She lay beside her mother in the strange spare room. She had got into bed straight from her undressing. On the other side of the mattress she had seen her mother's kneeling body like a dwarfed thing trailed there from the floor, and her hands propped up on the edge of the eiderdown, ivory-white against the red and yellow pattern, and her darling bird's head bowed to her finger-tips.