“Nothing whatever,” said Mrs. North decisively. “Except, of course, poor Dick’s death. She felt that very much at the time, and Roger thinks she has never got over it, don’t you, Roger?” Roger nodded. For a moment he considered laying before his friend the abnormal situation in which Ruth Seer believed, and which he himself had come anyway to recognize as within the realms of possibility. But the inclination faded almost as soon as born. He had had no speech yet with Ruth, nor did it seem fair to Violet. Possibly, perhaps, some personal pride held him. The doctor looked at him kindly. “Poor little girl! Well, she made a brave fight, I remember. Now, Mrs. North, no worrying. How old is the child? Twenty-six? You can get over anything at twenty-six! I’m sending in a nurse, and that woman upstairs is worth her weight in gold. You couldn’t have her in better hands. Now you’d like to go up and have a look at her. Don’t get worried because she won’t know you; that’s part of the illness.” But outside he looked at Roger with an anxious face. “She’s very ill, North,” he said. “It must have been coming on for some time. The storm—yes—that shook it up into active mischief, no doubt. We’ll pull her through, I hope; but would you like a specialist’s opinion? These brain troubles are very obscure.” “I leave it to you,” said North, his whole being sick and empty. “Well, we’ll see how she goes on in the next twenty-four hours.” He sped away, and Roger wandered aimlessly about the farm, looking at the wreckage of the storm, with Larry and the little dogs, conscious in their dumb way that their beloveds were in trouble, keeping at his heel. By one of those vagaries which make the English climate so lovable in spite of its iniquities, it was, after the day and night of storm and rain, that very wonderful thing a perfectly beautiful morning in November. The sun shone with astonishing warmth, scattering great masses of grey and silver cloud, against which the delicate black tracery of bough and twig, stripped of every lingering leaf, showed in exquisite perfection. The farm was wide awake and astir with the life of a new day. But Vi, little Vi, was lying up there, at the Door of Death. Recollections of her as a soft-headed, golden-eyed baby came back to him; as a small child flitting like a white butterfly about the garden; as a swift vision of long black legs and a cloud of dark hair, running wild with the boys; as the glorious hoyden who had taken her world by storm in the days just before the war. And now she lay there a broken thing, tossed and driven to death in the purposeless play of soulless and unpitying forces. He ground his teeth in impotent rage, overcome with a very anguish of helpless pain and wrath. If only Ruth would come and tell him what had happened!