Guy, as he had told me he would, had been to see her early in the morning. He had--another friend of childhood--overruled Mrs. Oden, saying it would be better not to wake Iris and bring her downstairs at that hour, for could there be a better place than bed in which to receive bad news? Mrs. Oden knew him of old, he was Apollo Belvedere to Mrs. Oden. She had been desperately upset about his news, coming as it did on top of what she had read about Gerald in that morning’s paper. Poor Mrs. Oden. Iris was asleep--“Oh, as no man can ever know sleep!”--when she awoke dimly to a tall shape at the foot of the bed. (“As no man can ever know sleep!” That, too, puzzled one, as well it might.) Dark it was, the curtains drawn, “and I remember them flapping peevishly because the door behind the tall shape was ajar. And I, scarcely awake, could think but of one thing, my awakening mind was hugging, in pain and joy, but one thing ... and I called the shape at the foot of the bed by a certain name, a name which was not his name. He made no sign that he had heard the name which was not his name, and I am sure he instantly made himself forget it. For, as you know, Guy would defend a secret not only against the angels of God, but also against himself. ‘Guy!’ I cried at last, and he seemed to smile faintly, like the handsome absent-minded god he is. ‘Yes, Guy,’ he said. ‘Sickening, isn’t it?’ Those high good looks of Guy’s, that small poised head--frozen, tireless Guy! But that morning he was very gentle with me....” He had spoken for me, too, saying that I hadn’t told her of Gerald’s death at the time because she had looked so tired and sad. “Poor Iris,” Guy had said, “the men who don’t know you very well care very much for your comfort, but the three young men who have known you best of all have not cared enough.” Guy had said that, and she lying in bed, stunned, staring, while he sat holding her hand, as he might be an elder brother and she a hurt baby.