That afternoon she helped me to the writing-table in the drawing-room, and I sat there trying to recapture the conversation I had heard. But although I could remember every word I found it hard to write. I could lie back in the chair and look at the gorse, the distant hills, the sea, the dim wide horizon, but to lean forward, take pen in hand, dip it in the ink, write, was almost beyond that still slowly ebbing strength. I whipped myself with the thought of what weak women had done, and dying men. “_My head is bloody but unbowed...._” Mine was bowed then, quickly over the writing-table; tears of self-pity welled hot, but I would not let them fall. It was not because Death was coming to me. I swear that then nor ever have I feared Death. But I was leaving so much undone. I had a place, and it was to know me no more. And the world was so lovely, the promise of spring in the air. When I lifted my bowed head Peter Kennedy was there, very pitiful as I could see by his eyes, and with a new gift of silence. Silence as to essentials, at least. He did not ask what ailed me, but spoke of a breakdown to the motor, of the wonder of the April weather. I soon regained my self-possession. “How soon after Margaret Capel came here did you make her acquaintance?” I asked him suddenly, and _à propos_ of nothing either of us had said. “It must have been a week or two, not more. I knew the house had been taken, but not by whom. And at first the name meant nothing to me. I am not a reading man; at least I don’t read novels.” “Don’t apologise. I have heard of the _Sporting Times_, _Bell’s Life_.” “Go on, gibe away, I like it. She was just the same only kinder, much kinder.” I laughed. “I knew she would be kind, and soft, and womanly. Didn’t she say she was lonely?” “Yes.” “And then say quickly: ‘But of course you are quite right. Reading is a waste of time, living everything, and you are doing a fine work, a man’s work in the world.’ She said she envied you. I can hear her saying it.” He looked ecstatic. “So can I. Ella says the same thing.” “Why are you so bitter?” I could not tell him it was because I had heard other women, many women, who were all things to all men, and that I despised, or perhaps envied them, lacking their gift and so having lived lonely save for Ella and Ella’s love. Until now, when it was too late. And then I looked at him, at Dr. Kennedy, and laughed. “Why do you laugh? You are so like and so unlike her. She would laugh for nothing, cry for nothing....” “Tell me all about her from the beginning.” It was an excuse to rest on the cushions in the easy-chair, to cease whipping my tired conscience. “There is little or nothing to tell. It was about a week after she came here we had the first call. _Urgent_, the message said. So I got on my bicycle and spun away up here. I did not even wait to get out the car.” “What day of the week was it?” I asked, interrupting him. “What day of the week?” he repeated in surprise.