"Tell me, Fyne," I cried, "you don't think the girl was mad--do you?"

He answered nothing. Soon the lighted beacon-like window of the cottage
came into view. Then Fyne uttered a solemn: "Certainly not," with
profound assurance. But immediately after he added a "Very highly strung
young person indeed," which unsettled me again. Was it a tragedy?

"Nobody ever got up at six o'clock in the morning to commit suicide," I
declared crustily. "It's unheard of! This is a farce."

As a matter of fact it was neither farce nor tragedy.

Coming up to the cottage we had a view of Mrs. Fyne inside still sitting
in the strong light at the round table with folded arms. It looked as
though she had not moved her very head by as much as an inch since we
went away. She was amazing in a sort of unsubtle way; crudely amazing--I
thought. Why crudely? I don't know. Perhaps because I saw her then in
a crude light. I mean this materially--in the light of an unshaded lamp.
Our mental conclusions depend so much on momentary physical
sensations--don't they? If the lamp had been shaded I should perhaps
have gone home after expressing politely my concern at the Fynes'
unpleasant predicament.

Losing a girl-friend in that manner is unpleasant. It is also
mysterious. So mysterious that a certain mystery attaches to the people
to whom such a thing does happen. Moreover I had never really understood
the Fynes; he with his solemnity which extended to the very eating of
bread and butter; she with that air of detachment and resolution in
breasting the common-place current of their unexciting life, in which the