“It _was_ good of you to come, Mr. Herold. I scarcely dared ask you, but--” “What's gone wrong?” he asked, with a smile. She began her tale: how her guardian neither ate nor slept, how he tore up page after page of copy,--he who used to write straight ahead; she found the pieces in the waste paper basket,--how he was growing gloomy and haggard and ill. Her woman's mind laid pathetic stress on these outward and visible signs. “You must have noticed the difference in him, Mr. Herold,” she said tearfully. He nodded. John took trouble badly, which was one of the reasons that endeared Herold to him. In some aspects he was nothing but a Pantagruelian infant; but it was no use discoursing on this to Unity. “He feels things very deeply,” he said instead. “Would n't you, if you loved Miss Stella, and never saw or heard from her?” “I should,” said he, with a smile. “And she loves him. I know it. And she feels deeply, too.” He acquiesced. “She, too, is very unhappy.” “And they 're separated forever because they can't marry?” “That is so, Unity,” said he. “Why can't he get rid of her--the other woman I mean?” cried Unity, fiercely. “She has given him no grounds for divorce.” Unity twisted her handkerchief in her hands. “I suppose there comes a time,” she said, “when people can't stand any more suffering, and they break down or do something dreadful.” “Your guardian is too strong for that,” replied Herold. “I don't know. I don't know.” The mothering instinct spoke. “That 's what I 've come to ask you about. I'm frightened.” [Illustration: 0294] She turned on him a miserable, scared face and told him of her discovery. She had gone into her guardian's study that morning in order to tidy up, and had seen that he had left the key in the lock of his private drawer, with the rest of the bunch hanging from it. She had opened the drawer and found, lying on top of some documents one of which was a sealed envelope endorsed “My Will,” a loaded revolver and a case of cartridges. She knew that the revolver was loaded because she had examined it. Then, hearing his step, she had shut the drawer, and gone on with her dusting. He had entered, locked the drawer, put the bunch in his pocket, and gone out without a word. Herold looked grave. More in order to gain time for reflection than to administer a moral lesson, he said: “You should n't have searched his private drawer, Unity.” “I'd search anything, if only I could find a way of helping him,” she replied impetuously. “When I see him suffer and can't do anything for him, I feel crazy. I can't sleep sometimes, and stand outside his door in the middle of the night. It does n't matter whether I ought n't to have done it or not,” she cried with an awkward and impatient gesture; “I did it, and I found what I found. What I want to know is, Why should my guardian make his will and keep a loaded revolver in his room unless he thought that--that he was going to die?”