"But never have I been so utterly yours as I am now!" she said, her voice still strong and unwavering. "And, oh, how it fed my heart to know what your first thought was, my darling. I think it would have broken if it had been anything else!" [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] TWENTY-FIRST After dinner that night, before she went to bed, Madge looked into Evelyn's room several times and spoke to him gently. But on all these occasions he was lying quite still and he did not answer her; so, thinking he was asleep, she eventually retired to her own room just opposite, and went to bed. For the last two nights she had scarcely closed her eyes, but now, with the intense relief of knowing that Evelyn knew, of feeling, too, that he was bearing it with such wonderful quietness and composure, she fell asleep at once and slept long and well. But her husband had not been asleep any of those times that she went into the room. He had never felt more awake in his life. But he had not answered her, because he had felt that he must be alone: just now nobody, not even she, could come near to him, for he had to go into the secret place of his soul, where only he himself might come. And as at the moment of death not even a man's nearest and dearest, she with whom he has been one flesh, may take a single step with the soul on its passage, but it has to go absolutely alone, so now none could go with Evelyn; for in these hours he had to die to practically all, Madge alone excepted, which the word "life" connoted to him. And having done that, he had to begin, to start living again. There Madge could help him, but for this death, this realisation of what had happened, this summing up of all that had been cut off, he had to be alone.