“I thought she was going to make him happy. . . . Look at him now, Mrs. Jameson. A broken man! Look at his life. Is it life? It isn’t life, Mrs. Jameson. It’s just death. And all”—he shook his hand at the photograph on the writing-table—“all because of one wretched woman who isn’t fit to polish his boots. _I_ polish his boots, Mrs. Jameson; _I_ run this house for him; _I_ do my best to make him happy. _I’d_ work my fingers to the bone for him. Why? Not for the few shillings a week he gives me—I haven’t been in service forty years for nothing, Mrs. Jameson—but because . . . because I’m fond of him. Is _she_ fond of him? Would she let him eat out his heart for her if she was fond of him? If she was fond of him, why didn’t she marry him then? Why doesn’t she marry him now? Write, write, write! Three years she’s been writing to him. And every time one of her letters comes, it makes him worse. Why doesn’t she stop writing to him? If she doesn’t want him, why can’t she leave him alone? Why can’t she leave him alone, Mrs. Jameson?” The man stopped speaking: the valet went on, “Many’s the time I’ve thought of writing to her myself, Madam. But I’ve served the Gordons—father and son—for over twenty years. And I know my place, Madam.” “And what would you have said in your letter, Prout?” Patricia asked the question almost automatically. “I should have told Miss Cochrane the truth, Madam.” . . . The door closed silently. Patricia found herself alone. A moment, she hesitated. The whole business seemed suddenly fantastic, out of its century. Men no longer died for love of one woman. Francis would get over this infatuation, recover his vitality, his joy of life. She could not do this thing. She, like Prout, “knew her place.” Then, for the mood of matehood was still strong in her, Patricia rose slowly from her chair; walked towards the desk. Again, she picked up the photograph, gazed into the eyes of it. The eyes seemed to ask a question, a matehood question. “Tell me,” the eyes seemed to say, “tell me. I too, can give. . . .” “What harm can it do?” thought Patricia. Her free hand, resting on a mass of papers, encountered something hard, something hard and flat. She put down the photograph; turned over the papers. . . . The Browning pistol lay at full cock, blue-black on the black wood of the desk; and she knew instinctively that Francis, disturbed at Peter’s entrance, must have turned the papers to hide it. . . . Now, Patricia hesitated no longer. His pen, the pen she had given him, was lying in a little lacquer pen-tray—her gift too. She picked it out; unscrewed the mechanism; sat down to the desk; drew a sheet of note-paper from its rack; and wrote, wrote for the life of a man. . . . Her quick movements shook the desk-top; till the pistol beside her quivered. It quivered to her hand as she wrote. She could not keep her eyes away from the pistol. . . .