“Why should I? What good did she ever do you? She pretended to be such a saint, but she hated you, and small wonder, seeing what you were. Why she even died to be rid of you. Oh, I know all about it, and you told me as much yourself. If my child is ever born I hope for your sake it will be such another as you are, or as I am. You can take your choice,” and with a glare of hate she rushed from the room. On a table near the fireplace stood spirits. The maddened husband went to them, filled a tumbler half full with brandy, added a little water and drank it off. He poured more brandy into the glass and began to think. To Barbara his mind was as an open book and she read what was passing there. What she saw were such thoughts as these: “My only comfort, and yet till within two years ago, whatever else I did, I never touched drink. I swore to my mother that I never would, and had she been alive to-day——. But Bess always liked her glass, and drinking alone is no company. Ah! if my mother had lived everything would have been different, for I outgrew the bad fit and might have become quite a decent fellow. But then I met Bess again by chance, and she had the old hold on me, and there was none to keep me back, and she knew how to play her fish until I married her. The old aunt never found it out. If she had I shouldn’t have 8,000 pounds a year to-day. I lied to her about that, and I wonder what she thinks of me now, if she can think where she is gone. I wonder what my mother thinks also, and my father, who was a good man by all accounts, though nobody seems to remember much about him. Supposing that they could see me now, supposing that they could have been at that supper party and witnessed the conjugal interview between me and the female creature who is my legal wife, what would they think? Well, they are dead and can’t, for the dead don’t come back. The dead are just a few double handfuls of dirt, no more, and since no doubt I shall join them before very long, I thank God for it, or rather I would if there were a God to thank. Here’s to the company of the Dead who will never hear or see or feel anything more from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.” Then he drank off the second half tumbler of brandy, hid his face in his hands and began to sob, muttering: “Mother, why did you leave me? Oh, mother, come back to me, mother, and save my soul from hell!” Barbara and Anthony awoke from their dream of the dreadful earth and looked into each other’s hearts. “It is true,” said their hearts, which could not lie, and with those words all the glory of their state faded to a grey nothingness.