Passing the rooms which had been set apart as nurseries, he heard a child’s feeble cry, and started, shuddered, and hastened his steps till he came to what had of late been Nita’s favourite room–a little boudoir opening from her bedroom. There was a dimness, subdued and faint. He stood on the threshold, looking round, and by degrees began to distinguish things more clearly. They had not drawn up the blinds here since Nita had last been in the room, the evening before she was taken ill. Everything was as she had left it. There was the couch on which she had spent so many weary hours, and the little table beside it, on which lay one or two books, and her writing-case, and a work-basket. Another book had fallen upon the floor, and something lay beside it, in which Jerome, looking intently, recognised Nita’s great dog, Speedwell, stretched upon the ground beside the couch, waiting, no doubt, for her return, and watching the book which had fallen; it was the book she had read in so much of late–her little ‘Imitation of Christ.’ The old dog looked up, with a wistful expression, whined a little, and waved his tail to and fro, as Jerome looked at him. With an inarticulate sound, which ended in a heavy sob, the young man dropped upon one end of the couch, covering his face with one hand, while the other hung down, and the dog licked it, and sat up, and whined again, asking where she was. His anguish at this moment amounted to torture, as he realised how completely everything had come to an end. Here, as he sat alone, with his own miserable thoughts–here and in this moment his wages were paid to him; measure for measure–no more and no less; wages which could not be refused, could not be transferred, must be accepted and counted over, and tasted to the bitter end. Let the future hold what it might, this hour could never be wiped out. In his then state of mind, he could not see any future at all; he could see nothing but the past–could realise nothing except that he had played a dishonest game, and had lost; and that at every turn in his mental path he was confronted by an ‘if.’ ‘If I had done this!’ ‘If I had told her that!’ He did not know how long he remained in Nita’s room, feeling the tokens of her recent presence on every side like whips of fire, but when he left the room and went out of the house, it was dusk, and he mechanically took his way towards a field-path by the river, along which one could wander for two or three miles uninterrupted by gate or stile, or barrier of any description. It was lonely and beautiful; it had been one of Nita’s favourite haunts. The path led sometimes through a kind of lane, with a high hedge on either side, and again through broad, level fields beside the river, towards Brentwood, with glorious views of hill and wood on every side.