"I trust you enjoyed your whist-game, Patricia." "Well, I couldn't help it. I'm not running a sanitarium. I wasn't responsible for her eternal drinking." The words skipped out of either mouth like gleeful little devils. Then both were afraid, and both were as icily tranquil as the thing upon the bed. You could not hear anything except the clock upon the mantel. Colonel Musgrave went to the mantel, opened the clock, and with an odd deliberation removed the pendulum from its hook. Followed one metallic gasp, as of indignation, and then silence. He spoke, still staring at the clock, his back turned to Patricia. "You must be utterly worn out. You had better go to bed." He shifted by the fraction of an inch the old-fashioned "hand-colored" daguerreotype of his father in Confederate uniform. "Please don't wear that black dress again. It is no cause for mourning that we are rid of an encumbrance." Behind him, very far away, it seemed, he heard Patricia wailing, "Olaf----!" Colonel Musgrave turned without any haste. "Please go," he said, and appeared to plead with her. "You must be frightfully tired. I am sorry that I was not here. I seem always to evade my responsibilities, somehow--" Then he began to laugh. "It _is_ rather amusing, after all. Agatha was the most noble person I have ever known. The--this habit of hers to which you have alluded was not a part of her. And I loved Agatha. And I suppose loving is not altogether dependent upon logic. In any event, I loved Agatha. And when I came back to her I had come home, somehow--wherever she might be at the time. That has been true, oh, ever since I can remember--" He touched the dead hand now. "Please go!" he said, and he did not look toward Patricia. "For Agatha loved me better than she did God, you know. The curse was born in her. She had to pay for what those dead, soft-handed Musgraves did. That is why her hands are so cold now. She had to pay for the privilege of being a Musgrave, you see. But then we cannot always pick and choose as to what we prefer to be." "Oh, yes, of course, it is all my fault. Everything is my fault. But God knows what would have become of you and your Agatha if it hadn't been for me. Oh! oh!" Patricia wailed. "I was a child and I hadn't any better sense, and I married you, and you've been living off my money ever since! There hasn't been a Christmas present or a funeral wreath bought in this house since I came into it I didn't pick out and pay for out of my own pocket. And all the thanks I get for it is this perpetual fault-finding, and I wish I was dead like this poor saint here. She spent her life slaving for you. And what thanks did she get for it? Oh, you ought to go down on your knees, Rudolph Musgrave--!" "Please leave," he said.