“My dear Lou!” cried Olive in tragic contralto. “Don’t refrain for my sake. The bargain’s made; we can’t help what’s in the bundle.” The two unhappy women trudged the long miles back from the station to their lodging. Helena sat in the swinging express revolving the same thought like a prayer-wheel. It would be difficult to think of anything more trying than thus sitting motionless in the train, which itself is throbbing and bursting its heart with anxiety, while one waits hour after hour for the blow which falls nearer as the distance lessens. All the time Helena’s heart and her consciousness were with Siegmund in London, for she believed he was ill and needed her. “Promise me,” she had said, “if ever I were sick and wanted you, you would come to me.” “I would come to you from hell!” Siegmund had replied. “And if you were ill—you would let me come to you?” she had added. “I promise,” he answered. Now Helena believed he was ill, perhaps very ill, perhaps she only could be of any avail. The miles of distance were like hot bars of iron across her breast, and against them it was impossible to strive. The train did what it could. That day remains as a smear in the record of Helena’s life. In it there is no spacing of hours, no lettering of experience, merely a smear of suspense. Towards six o’clock she alighted, at Surbiton station, deciding that this would be the quickest way of getting to Wimbledon. She paced the platform slowly, as if resigned, but her heart was crying out at the great injustice of delay. Presently the local train came in. She had planned to buy a local paper at Wimbledon, and if from that source she could learn nothing, she would go on to his house and inquire. She had prearranged everything minutely. After turning the newspaper several times she found what she sought. “The funeral took place, at two o’clock today at Kingston Cemetery, of ——. Deceased was a professor of music, and had just returned from a holiday on the South Coast….” The paragraph, in a bald twelve lines, told her everything. “Jury returned a verdict of suicide during temporary insanity. Sympathy was expressed for the widow and children.” Helena stood still on the station for some time, looking at the print. Then she dropped the paper and wandered into the town, not knowing where she was going. “That was what I got,” she said, months afterwards; “and it was like a brick, it was like a brick.”