“She isn’t fighting. She hasn’t any fight in her— Now, while she’s sleeping, is the time. You’ve only got to say to yourself ‘She shall live. She’s going to live.’ There—you sit in that chair, make yourself quite comfortable, shut your eyes, and keep on saying it. Don’t think of anything else.” He sat down. He said it over and over again: “She shall live. She’s going to live. She shall live—” He tried to think of nothing else; but all the time he was aware of the dragging of his heart. He shut his eyes, but he couldn’t get rid of the vision of Effie. Effie sitting in his mother’s place. Effie sleeping beside him in the big bed. “She _shall_ live. She’s going to live.” The words meant nothing. Only the dragging weight at his heart had meaning. And it didn’t lie. He thought: If that’s how I feel about it, I’d better keep my mind off her. Then he was aware that he was tired, dead beat, too tired to think. And presently, sitting upright in the chair, he fell asleep. He was waked by Nurse Eden’s voice calling to him from the bed: “Mr. Hollyer! She’s going!” His mother lay in the nurse’s arms, her head had fallen forward on her chest, her mouth was open; and through it there came a groaning, grating cry. Once, twice, three times; and she was gone. After the funeral Hollyer went up into his mother’s room. Nurse Eden was there, removing the signs of death. She had covered the bed with a white counterpane. She had opened the door and window wide, and a flood of clean cold air streamed through the room. “Nurse,” he said, “come here a minute.” She followed him into his bed-sitting room on the other side of the landing. Hollyer shut the door. “You remember that night when my mother got better?” “Indeed I do.” “Do you still think you brought her back?” “I do think it.” “Do you really believe that a thought—_a thought_ could do that?” “Yes.” “But it doesn’t always work. It breaks down.” “Sometimes. That night she died I felt it wasn’t working. I was up against a wall. I couldn’t get through. But remember, before that, she was going when I brought her back.” “Could a thought—another thought—kill?” “It depends. Perhaps, if it was a very strong thought. A wish.” Her queer eyes looked through him and beyond him, not seeing him, seeing some reality that was not he. He had gone to her for her truth and she had given it him. A wish, even a hidden wish, could kill. In the dark, secret places of the mind your thoughts ran loose beyond your knowing; they burrowed under the walls that shut off one self from another; they got through. It was as if his secret self had broken loose, and got through to his mother, and had killed her secretly, in the dark. His wish was a part of himself, but stronger than himself. The force behind it was indestructible, for it was a form of his desire for Effie; so that while he lived he could not kill it.