His eye fell on it and he involuntarily stopped. The girl beside him suddenly jerked his sleeve. “That’s mother,” she said in a hurried whisper. “Take care. She can see us. Now don’t look surprised--” then raising her voice a little she said: “Mother dear, here’s Colonel Parrish.” The Colonel, as he mounted the stairs, took off his hat and held it. The woman in the chair was facing him. From the descending folds of the many loose wrappings that hung about her emaciated figure, her head rose, the face looking at him with still, eager interest. She gave a little smile and a waxen hand of skeleton thinness emerged from the folds of her shawls. “Jim Parrish!” she said in a sweet, husky voice, then looking into his face with eyes of mild, unconscious friendliness, she said softly, “Jim.” He would never have known her till he heard the voice and saw the smile. They were the same. The old dimple had disappeared and a wrinkle had taken its place. The eyes, the clear, greenish-brown eyes, were sunken into dark caverns, the satiny skin grown loose and sallow. Yet it was Alice, Alice old before her time, Alice sick, Alice dying. He turned round and found a chair, for the moment not daring to speak. He was conscious of the figure of Rosamund walking toward the garden dragging a serpent-like length of hose behind her. Then he placed the chair close to the sick woman and sat down. To him it was a moment that he had thought of in dark reveries, and even in thought found too painful. Now he was conscious that there was a tranquillity about it, an absence of tension, which was due to Alice. Her manner suggested nothing but a peaceful recollection of old friendship. Was it that the near approach of death was wiping out all the disturbing and cruel emotions, all the biting memories, that belonged to life? She looked at him with her little affectionate smile as a sick sister might. “It’s so queer it being you,” she said. “When June told me I couldn’t believe it. After--after--how long is it, Jim?” “Twenty-one years,” he said. “Yes, twenty-one years,” she repeated. “How time flies! And what a lot has happened in those twenty-one years. You’re rich, they say. And your hair’s quite white, but I’d have known you anywhere. You’re not much changed.” She continued to look at him with the same gentle, softly exploring air. He had had an idea that even in death he would see shame and remorse in her eyes, but they were as devoid of either as though he had never been other than a girlhood friend. “It was so odd your just happening on June that way. She says you were so kind to her, she felt immediately you were her friend. Poor little June! It was such an amusement for her that evening. She’s not had much pleasure of that kind. And she’s twenty now, just the age when a girl longs for a little of the good times of life.”