When his long pacing in the Champs Elysées was over Kendal went back to find Paul busy with his wife's letters and trinkets, turning them over With a look of shivering forlornness, as though the thought of the uncompanioned lifetime to come were already closing upon him like some deadly chill in the air. Beside him lay two miniature cases open; one of them was the case which Eustace had received from his sister's hand on the afternoon before her death, and both of them contained identical portraits of Marie in her first brilliant womanhood. 'Do you remember them?' Paul said in his husky Voice, pointing them out to him. 'They were done when you were at college and she was twenty-three. Your mother had two taken--one for herself and one for your old aunt Marion. Your mother left me hers when she died, and your aunt's copy of it came back to us last year. Tell Miss Bretherton its history. She will prize it. It is the best picture still.' Kendal made a sign of assent and took the case. Paul rose and stood beside him, mechanically spreading out his hands to the fire. 'To-morrow, as soon as you are gone, I shall go off to Italy. There are some little places in the south near Naples that she was very fond of. I shall stay about there for a while. As soon as I feel I can, I shall come back to the Senate and my work. It is the only thing left me,--she was so keen about it.' His voice sank into a whisper, and a long silence fell upon them. Women in moments of sorrow have the outlet of tears and caresses; men's great refuge is silence; but the silence may be charged with sympathy and the comfort of a shared grief. It was so in this case. The afternoon light was fading, and Kendal was about to rise and make some necessary preparations for his journey, when Paul detained him, looking up at him with sunken eyes which seemed to carry in them all the history of the two nights just past. 'Will you ever ask her what Marie wished?' The tone was the even and passionless tone of one who for the moment feels none of the ordinary embarrassments of intercourse; Kendal met it with the same directness. 'Some day I shall ask her, or at least I shall let her know; but it will be no use.' Paul shook his head, but whether in protest or agreement Kendal could hardly tell. Then he went back to his task of sorting the letters, and let the matter drop. It seemed as if he were scarcely capable of taking an interest in it for its own sake, but simply as a wish, a charge of Marie's. Kendal parted from him in the evening with an aching heart, and was haunted for hours by the memory of the desolate figure returning slowly into the empty house, and by a sharp prevision of all the lonely nights and the uncomforted morrows which lay before the stricken man.