“Hush . . .” said Aunt Laura, with an air of being scandalised. She left him, closing the door with exaggerated quietness behind her, leaving him alone in the room that had once witnessed so much happiness. He didn’t know what to do. Read? The idea was ridiculous. He looked at the familiar shelves, on which he knew the place and title of every book. A sense of the room’s awful emptiness oppressed him, for everything in it recalled the memory of his darling’s presence; the books that they had read together; the big chair in which he had sat cuddled in her arms; her workbasket on the table by the window; and—terribly pathetic—a shopping list scribbled on the back of an envelope. He couldn’t bear to be alone in the room with so many inanimate reminders; and while he was debating where he should go, a sudden angry jealousy flamed up in his heart towards the other people in the house: his father, Aunt Laura, the doctor, and the unknown nurse who shared the privilege that was denied him and didn’t realise its value. He clenched his hands and cried aloud: “We belong to one another. . . . She’s mine. . . . She’s mine. I hate them.” He opened the door softly and stepped into the hall. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he looked into the drawing-room. There stood the piano with a sonata of Beethoven upon the music-stand. The room was full of a curious penetrating odour which came, he discovered, from a big vase full of pinks that had faded and gone yellow. Some days ago, he supposed, his mother had picked them. Her hands . . . he worshipped her hands. A strange and uncontrollable impulse made him bend and kiss the dead flowers. But the atmosphere of that room was if anything more cruel than the other. He couldn’t stay there. Once more he found himself in the darkness and quiet of the hall. The house had never been so silent. Only, in the corner an oak grandfather’s clock with a brass face engraved with the name of Carver, Hay, ticked steadily. In the silence he heard his own heart beating far faster than the clock. Scarcely knowing what he was doing he climbed upstairs and crept quietly to the door of the room where his mother was lying. He knelt on the mat outside the door and listened. Inside the room there was no sound; not even a sound of breathing. If only he dared open the door. . . . If only he could see her for a second she might smile at him and he would be satisfied. He was thankful to find that the mere fact of being nearer to her made him feel more happy. For a long time he knelt there, and then, hearing a slight noise in his own room, where his father was supposed to be resting, he stole downstairs again, a little comforted, opened the front door and went out into the garden. II