Peter lighted a match, and held it above his head. He saw that the linoleum had been torn from the floor; that the kitchen was empty of furniture; that the dust and rubbish of removal lay in the four corners. The match burnt his fingers and went out. Every sensation died in Peter. He stood in the darkness, hearing small noises of water, the light patter of soot dislodged from the chimney, the creak and rustle of a house deserted. When his eyes were used to the dark, he moved towards a glimmer from the hall-door. He could not yet believe what he saw. He expected the silence of his dream to break. Mechanically he went through the house, standing at last under the eaves of Miranda's attic-room. His eyes, straining to the far corner, traced the white outline of the sloping ceiling. He stood where Miranda had so often slept, a wall's breadth from himself. The water dripped pitilessly in the roof, and Peter, poor model of an English boy, lay in grief, utterly abandoned, his clenched hands beating the naked floor. XII There was a veiled expression in Peter's eyes that evening when he met his mother. Passion was exhausted. He divined already that Miranda was irrecoverable, that pursuit was useless. He now clearly understood how and why she had suffered. His late agony in her room she had many times endured, looking in his letters for a passion not yet illumined, eager to find that he needed her, but finding always that she lived in a palace of cloud. He saw now that Miranda's love had never been the dreaming ecstasy from which he himself had just awakened. He remembered and understood what he had merely accepted as characteristic of her turbulent spirit--sudden fits of petulance, occasions when without apparent reason she had flung savagely away from him. There were other things which thrilled him now, as when her arms tightened about his neck, and she answered his light caress with urgent kisses. Peter's mother gave him a note in Miranda's hand: "PETER,--We are going to Canada, and I am not going to write to you. I think, Peter, you are only a boy, and one day you will find out whether you really loved me. I am older than you. I shall not come back to you, because you are going to be rich, and your friends cannot be my friends. If you had answered my last letter, perhaps I could not have done this. But it is better." When Peter had finished reading he saw that his mother was watching him. He was learning to notice things. His mother, too, he had never really regarded except in relation to himself. Yet she had seen unfold the tale of his passion. She, too, had been affected. He passed her the letter, and waited as she read. "You know, mother, what this means?" he asked, shyly moved to confide in her. "Yes, Peter, I think I do," she answered, glad of his trust. Peter bent eagerly towards her. "Can you tell me where they have gone?" Mrs. Paragon gently denied him: