Beside the crackling wood fire, his arms on the chimney piece, his face hidden, stood a gray-haired man. He raised himself as she spoke. His news was in his face; it was written all too plainly there. “Father!” gasped Erica in a voice which seemed altogether different from the first exclamation, almost as if it belonged to a different person. Raeburn took her in his arms. “My child--my poor little Eric!” he said. She did not speak a word, but clung to him as though to keep herself from falling. In one instant it seemed as though her whole world had been wrecked, her life shattered. She could not even realize that her father was still left to her, except in so far as the mere bodily support was concerned. He was strong; she clung to him as in a hurricane she would have clung to a rock. “Say it,” she gasped, after a timeless silence, perhaps of minutes, perhaps of hours, it might have been centuries for aught she knew. “Say it in words.” She wanted to know everything, wanted to reduce this huge, overwhelming sorrow to something intelligible. Surely in words it would not be so awful--so limitless. And he said it, speaking in a low, repressed voice, yet very tenderly, as if she had been a little child. She made a great effort to listen, but the sentences only came to her disjointedly and as if from a great distance. It had been very sudden--a two hours' illness, no very great suffering. He had been lecturing at Birmingham--had been telegraphed for--had been too late. Erica made a desperate effort to realize it all; at last she brought down the measureless agony to actual words, repeating them over and over to herself--“Mother is dead.” At length she had grasped the idea. Her heart seemed to die within her, a strange blue shade passed over her face, her limbs stiffened. She felt her father carry her to the window, was perfectly conscious of everything, watched as in a dream, while he wrenched open the clumsy fastening of the casement, heard the voices in the street below, heard, too, in the distance the sound of church bells, was vaguely conscious of relief as the cold air blew upon her. She was lying on a couch, and, if left to herself, might have lain there for hours in that strange state of absolute prostration. But she was not alone, and gradually she realized it. Very slowly the re-beginning of life set in; the consciousness of her father's presence awakened her, as it were, from her dream of unmitigated pain. She sat up, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him, then for a minute let her aching head rest on his shoulder. Presently, in a low but steady voice, she said: “What would you like me to do, father?” “To come home with me now, if you are able,” he said; “tomorrow morning, though, if you would rather wait, dear.”