“There was a long article in _The Times_. Oh, so _cold_! . . . I knew he was terribly ill. That’s what made _me_ so ill this summer, though I couldn’t tell you before. I thought you might guess; the doctor did. I’ve been going up and down, up and down, as he got better or worse. The afternoon he died I fainted; and they all thought I was dead too. Now you understand why I wrote such horrid letters: as he slipped away, I couldn’t bear myself. I _did_ try to keep it all to myself. I knew how I hurt you by talking about him. But no one told me anything! . . . I couldn’t ask Lady Lane for fear she’d say I’d killed him. And he died before I could ask him to forgive me.” Barbara was no longer trying to control her tears; and I was no longer thinking of anything but a means of comforting her. “He didn’t feel there was anything to forgive,” I assured her. “Ah, that was the way he talked!” “It was the way he thought, Babs.” “Then he might have spared me this!,” Barbara broke out. “Just one word!” As her head fell forward, I knelt down and chafed her hands. “He may have been too weak,” I said. “A message, then! I can’t _bear_ it! I didn’t think he _could_ be so cruel.” In furious self-scorn, I remembered telling O’Rane I could not pretend for five minutes that I had not received Eric’s letter. Very little more than five minutes had passed since Barbara and I met. “In justice to him,” I said, “there _was_ a message. I was paraphrasing it. He never dreamt you needed his forgiveness, he was begging for yours. He loved you as much at the end as he’d ever done. His last words—so faint I could hardly read them!—were ‘God bless you’. And we must assume that he died at peace. You’d forgiven him so often, he said, that, if God was disposed to judge him, he believed you would intercede.” In her agony of spirit, Barbara’s thoughts were reflected as clearly as if she had spoken them. Her eyes lightened for a moment in unutterable relief; they clouded as she looked suspiciously to see if I was inventing this opportune comfort; then she stared through me and past me to Eric’s death-bed six thousand miles away. “He . . . wrote to you?,” she enquired after a long silence. I half nodded; but, with Barbara’s eyes on mine, I could not put a lie into words. “The letter was to you,” I said. “I opened it with the rest.” There was a single piteous whimper. Then she looked at me in perplexity: “Where is it? Why didn’t you tell me?” “It’s in my despatch-box. . . . I didn’t want to harrow you, darling. I think he was delirious part of the time.” . . . “Will you get it for me?” “I’ve told you all that matters. It will only make you miserable to read it.” She seemed not to have heard me; but a strangled laugh, more terrible than her crying, shewed the worth of my comfort: