Marise opened her own door and looked down on the old figure in the straight, yellowed night-gown, the knotted, big-veined hand shielding the candle from the wandering summer breeze which blew an occasional silent, fragrant breath in from the open windows. "I don't know what people do as a rule," she answered, and then asked, "How did Miss Hetty like best to have it, herself?" "Oh, open, always." "We'd better open it, then." The old servant swayed before the closed door, the candlestick shaking in her hand. She looked up at Marise timidly. "You do it," she said under her breath. Marise felt a faint pitying scorn, stepped past Agnes, lifted the latch, and opened the door wide into the blackness of the other room. The dense silence seemed to come out, coldly and softly. For Marise it had the sweetness of a longed-for anaesthetic, it had the very odor of the dreamless quiet into which she longed to sink. But Agnes shrank away, drew hastily closer to Marise, and whispered in a sudden panic, "Oh, don't it scare you? Aren't you afraid to be here all alone, just you and me? We'd ought to have had a man stay too." Marise tried to answer simply and kindly, "No, I'm not afraid. It is only all that is left of dear Cousin Hetty." But the impatience and contemptuous surprise which she kept out of her words and voice were felt none the less by the old woman. She drooped submissively as under a reproach. "I know it's foolish," she murmured, "I know it's foolish." She began again to weep, the tears filling her faded eyes and running quietly down her wrinkled old cheeks. "You don't know how gone I feel without her!" she mourned. "I'd always had her to tell me what to do. Thirty-five years now, every day, she's been here to tell me what to do. I can't make it seem true, that it's her lying in there. Seems as though every minute she'd come in, stepping quick, the way she did. And I fairly open my mouth to ask her, 'Now Miss Hetty, what shall I do next?' and then it all comes over me." Marise's impatience and scorn were flooded by an immense sympathy. What a pitiable thing a dependent is! Poor old Agnes! She leaned down to the humble, docile old face, and put her cheek against it. "I'll do my best to take Cousin Hetty's place for you," she said gently, and then, "Now you'd better go back to bed. There's a hard day ahead of us." Agnes responded with relief to the tone of authority. She said with a reassured accent, "Well, it's all right if _you're_ not afraid," turned and shuffled down the hall, comforted and obedient. Marise saw her go into her room, heard the creak of the bed as she lay down on it, and then the old voice, "Miss Marise, will it be all right if I leave my candle burning, just this once?" "Yes, yes, Agnes, that'll be all right," she answered. "Go to sleep now." As she went back into her own room, she thought passingly to herself, "Strange that anyone can live so long and grow up so little."