"Well, we've got to look after ourselves now," she whispered to the sleeping child. "I don't think we care to go and see him, do we? I daresay she wouldn't refuse it, but we won't go. That was his wife, who said she'd a little boy like you, and of course we're all very sorry for her. She did give him all she had; she said she'd die for him; but of course that's only a way people have of speaking when they mean they love somebody very much. Nobody wants her to die for him really; that would only be two dead instead of one; and she won't actually die.... And she'd a sad thing happen once before. Nobody ever knew about that really except me and him; she didn't know; if she did she might die really then. People have to be careful, they say, when they've once had a terrible shock. It's rather funny though, Jimmy, that mother shouldn't feel very much of a shock. Of course I didn't expect it, but as soon as it happened it seemed as if it had been bound to happen. That's queer--and I don't know that I wouldn't have preferred the shock." She continued her curious consolation of the sleeping boy: "Poor Jimmy--poor mother! He looked beaten yesterday--done--but I didn't think.... One never does think till afterwards.... Ah, but mother did, once, a long time ago! Mother danced with him once, and knew then--and the next time she saw him Jimmy was quite a big boy. If she could only have seen him a few times in between, she doesn't know what she could have done, but she would have done something, and then by-and-by he would have blessed her for it--she's sure, quite sure he would.... And there she was, with some terrible people at a music hall----" She choked a little. Even had it been proposed to her, she did not think she would have gone to see Jim. That was another woman's affair; Louie's part in him had nothing to do with what remained now. Not that she was so absurd as to tell herself she had lost nothing; even when it is only yours to look at, or perhaps to put your arms about just once, a body counts for something; but the other woman had had nothing but that. "Nothing but" was perhaps a queer way of putting it; for that "nothing but" Louie might perhaps have given all the rest; but all the same it was not very much her business now. Her business now, like the other woman's, was to jog on just the same, the one in her empty mansion, the other one it didn't much matter where. Again she whispered to Jimmy.