After all, how insane it was for him to be huddling miserably, as she knew he would be, in the arm-chair of his study, gazing with forlorn eyes at the squalid columns, which it had grown too dark for him to decipher. She had a vision of what this very evening might yet hold of recovered magic, if only she had the courage to carry out her simple cure of his head drawn down on to her left breast, just where her heart was beating. "Dickie, it's _all right_, you know--it's only Ruth I You've been sitting with your bogies all the time the white lilac has been coming out----" A faint smile lay at last on Ruth's mouth, and in the curve of her tired eyelids. She went softly into the study. The door was open.... Dickie sprang to his feet with a yell of terror as her hands came round his neck from behind. He clutched at the revolver in his pocket and fired, at random, backwards.... In the wall behind them was the round dark mark of a merciful bullet. And---- "Dickie--oh, Dickie--when you've been frightened--and have to live with it--and it doesn't even stop at nights--do you understand, now, how it happens? They've no right to call _that_ murder, have they, Dickie?" And now, indeed, understanding that the awful act of killing could be, in a rare once or twice, a human accident for the frightened little human to commit--understanding, Dickie was shocked back to sanity. "Dear, dear Ruth----" Why, this stranger woman was no stranger, after all, but Ruth, his own sweet wife. Dickie was tired, and he knew he need not explain things to her. He laid his head down on her left breast, just where the heart was beating. THE WOMAN WHO SAT STILL By PARRY TRUSCOTT (From _Colour_) 1922 When he went, when he had to go, he took with him the memory of her that had become crystallised, set for him in his own frequent words to her, standing at her side, looking down at her with his keen, restless eyes--such words as: "It puzzles me how on earth you manage to sit so still...." Then, enlarging: "It is wonderful to me how you can keep so happy doing nothing--make of enforced idleness a positive pleasure! I suppose it is a gift, and I haven't got it--not a bit. It doesn't matter how tired I am, I have to keep going--people call it industry, but its real name is nervous energy, run riot. I can't even take a holiday peacefully. I must be actively playing if I cannot work. I'm just the direct descendant of the girl in the red shoes--they were red, weren't they?--who had to dance on and on until she dropped. I shall go on and on until I drop, and then I shall attempt a few more useless yards on all fours...." "Come now," in answer to the way she shook her head at him, smiled at him from her sofa, "you know very well how I envy you your gift, your power of sitting still--happily still--your power of contemplation...." And one day, more intimately still, with a sigh and a look (Oh, a look she understood!), "To me you are the most restful person in the world...."