Conway was burned to death that night when his father’s house was destroyed. Theodosia had the news of this disaster from Siver when he came to kindle the fire in her grate; there was a hint of late frost in the air. She waked from unrested sleep when Siver fumbled with the wood and the coal, when he fumbled with the door latch. She turned on her pillow as he waited at the doorway, as he looked away from the bed uncertainly, his head leaned forward, preparing a disclosure. “What is it?” she asked. She knew he had something to tell. “Tell it, Siver. Has Aunt Bet got a misery this morning? Do you have to cook the breakfast?” He told her then as he worried with the latch. Mr. Dudley Brooke’s house had burned. “Towarge midnight,” he said. “Mr. Dudley Brooke’s house,” he said. He lingered at the door, half closing it, drifting in and out of the doorway, looking at the floor where the bright light of the fire danced in brilliant yellow, averting his eyes from her. She was sitting up in the bed now, the coverlets thrown aside, her passion to know what Siver had been saying over and over leaping the space that had been set between them by their offices as mistress and houseman. She asked rapid questions, impatient of the replies which came as if they had been known before, came to her ears as routine once the first great fact had assailed her. “Mr. Conway, he got burned up too, got burned to death in the house, clean to death,” Siver said. He stood in the doorway, rubbing his hand on the wood of the frame, mumbling his story over and over beyond the low flare of her repeated questions. Suddenly her mind became clear again after the fog of surprise. It was true that Siver had dreamed the story. “You dreamed all this, Siver. You’re not awake yet.” “You can smell the smoke out in the trees for your own self and you can smell the burn outside, if you go out. They got his body out towarge day and put it in a coffin and took it over to Mr. Eli Brooke’s house, his uncle’s house. You can see the smoke out in the trees and you can smell of the fire....” The report was then a confirmation; the coffin, when Siver spoke of it, settled the truth into her. She arose and dressed herself for the day and later she met the music teacher in the parlor and played the lesson with mechanical care.