The girl, when I got back, was sitting in a rocking-chair by the window. She seemed neither relieved nor disturbed by my return. Her eyes were fixed on the blank wall opposite her. Her colorless face showed only too plainly that this shock from which she had suffered had left her indifferent to all other currents of life, as though every further stroke of fate had been rendered insignificant. She did not even turn her eyes when I carried the hamper into the room and opened it. She did not look up as I poured the wine and held a glass of it for her to drink. She sipped at it absently, brokenly, reminding me of a bird drinking from a saucer-edge. But I made her take more of it. I persisted, until I could see a faint and shell-like tinge of color creep into her cheeks. Then she looked at me, for the first time, with comprehending and strangely grateful eyes. She made a move, as though to speak. But as she did so I could see the quick gush of tears that came to her eyes and her gesture of hopelessness as she looked down at the newspaper on the floor. "Oh, I want to die!" she cried brokenly and weakly. "I want to die!" Her words both startled and perplexed me. Here, within a few hours' time, I was encountering the second young person who seemed tired of life, who was ready and walling to end it. "What has happened?" I asked, as I held more of the Burgundy out for her to drink. Then I picked up the afternoon paper with the flaring head-lines. She pointed with an unsteady finger to the paper in my hands. "Do you know her?" she asked. '"Yes, I happen to know her," I admitted. "Have you known her long?" asked the girl. "Only a couple of years," I answered. "Since she first went with Frohman." The possible truth flashed over me. They were sisters. That was the strange tie that bound them together; one the open and flashing and opulent, and the other the broken and hidden and hopeless. "Do you know Harriet Walter?" I asked. She laughed a little, forlornly, bitterly. The wine, I imagined, had rather gone to her head. "I _am_ Harriet Walter!" was her somewhat startling declaration. She was still shaken and ill, I could see. I took the Burgundy glass from her hand. I wanted her mind to remain lucid. There was a great deal for me still to fathom. "And they say she's going to die?" she half declared, half inquired, as her eyes searched my face. "But what will it mean to you?" I demanded. She seemed not to have heard; so I repeated the question. "It means the end," she sobbed, "the end of everything!" "But why?" I insisted. She covered her face with her hands. "Oh, I can't tell you!" she moaned. "I can't explain." "But there must be some good and definite reason why this young woman's death should end everything for you." The girl looked about her, like a life-prisoner facing the four blank walls of a cell. Her face was without hope. Nothing but utter misery, utter despair, was written on it.