It was not what he had intended to say at all--something rather more dramatic and on the lines of “Shoot if you must this old grey head, but if you will only listen to a reasonable explanation--” had been uppermost in his mind. But the sight of Peter's father crouched over what must be Mrs. Severance's body, his weak hands fumbling for her wrist and heart, his voice thin with a senile sorrow as if he had been stricken at once and in an instant with a palsy of incurable age, brought the whole world of Southampton and house-parties and reality that Oliver thought he had lost touch with forever, back to him so vividly that all he could do was gape at the tableau on the floor. Mr. Piper looked up and for a second of relief Oliver thought that the staring eyes had not recognized him at all. Then he realized from the look in them that who or what he was made singularly little difference now to Mr. Piper. “Water!” croaked Mr. Piper. “Water! I've shot her. Oh, poor Rose, poor Rose!” and he was plucking at her dress again with absorbed, incapable fingers. Oliver looked around him. The gun. There must have been a gun. Where? Oh _there_--and as he picked it up from under a chair he did so with much inward reverence in spite of the haste he took to it, for he felt as if it were all the next forty years of his life made little into something cold and small and of metal that he was lifting like a doll from the floor. “Water,” said Mr. Piper again and quite horribly. “Water for Rose.” It was only when he had gone back to the kitchen and started looking for glasses that he realized that Mrs. Severance might very possibly be dying out there in the other room. Till then the mere fact that he was not dying himself had been too large in his vision to give him time to develop proper sympathy for others. When he did, though, he hurried bunglingly, in spite of a nervous flash in which after accidentally touching the revolver in his pocket he almost threw it through the pane of the nearest window before he considered. A moment, though, and he was back with a spilling tumbler. “Water,” said Mr. Piper with querulous satisfaction. “Give her water.” Oliver hesitated. “Where's she shot?” he said sharply. “I don't know. Oh, I don't know. But I shot her. I shot her. Poor Rose.” It was certainly odd, there being no blood about, thought Oliver detachedly. Internal wounds? Possibly, but even so. He dipped his fingers in the glass of water, bent over Mrs. Severance and sprinkled the drops as near her closed eyelids as possible. No sound came from her and not a muscle of her body moved, but the delicate skin of the eyelids shivered momentarily. Oliver drew a long breath and stepped back.