Dora looked at the doctor, who shook his head. She stood up and drew him a little aside. "Give me a cigarette," she said in a savage undertone. "Give me one at once; it can make no difference." "I hardly think----" he began helplessly. But she interrupted, still in an undertone of concentrated intensity. "Give me it at once; I insist." The doctor handed her his case. She took out a cigarette. "There, darling," she said to Edwin, and her voice was soft again. "Look, I'll put it in your mouth for you and light it." The doctor gave her a match and she held the little flame steadily to Edwin's cigarette. He drew in a breath and choked a little. "It's ripping," he said thickly. "Thanks awfully, Mother." His eyelids fell again and the cigarette dropped from his flaccid lips. With a little choking sigh, Edwin Greene died. Mrs. Greene stood still, but in a moment the doctor took her arm. "He's gone, Mrs. Greene; poor little chap. Will you come away now?" But with a loud moan Dora Greene fell on her knees and subsided in a passion of tears over the body of her son. "He's gone," she cried, "gone, and he never loved me. First his father took him from me, and then his grandmother, and now he's dead and I'll never have him." For a moment both doctor and matron were taken aback by the sudden change from rigid self-control to complete abandon, but as the sobs turned into laughter and screams, both regained their composure. With some difficulty they half led, half carried, Dora Greene to the school sanatorium, where she passed the night between tears, hysteria and passionate vituperations against the father and grandmother who had robbed her of her son during his short life. V During the next few months Mrs. Pratt proved herself so willing a confidante, so soothing and consoling a listener that Dora Greene finally asked her to come and live with her. The arrangement worked surprisingly well. Life settled into a routine of gossip, bridge and tea-parties, broken only by a joint summer holiday and an occasional week at Easter when Dora went to stay with her father, now a widower, but still running his small parish competently and successfully. It was tacitly understood between the two ladies that when Mrs. Greene had indulged in a long narrative embracing every sorrow and grievance of her existence, she should pay for the luxury of having an audience by performing that function in her turn. Mrs. Pratt's saga confined itself to full details of her sufferings at Mr. Pratt's hands during the months that preceded his departure from this life in a violent attack of delirium tremens. Mrs. Greene was already acquainted with the history of Mr. Pratt's life and death, but it made good hearing none the less, and on the other hand Mrs. Pratt particularly enjoyed the point in Mrs. Greene's reminiscences at which handkerchiefs were brought out, and they recalled what a happy, bright boy little Edwin had been.