sung to her over the piano, looking love into her eyes, died to her,
and Jane, cold and steady, sat down on the side of the bed and fed
the eggnog, spoonful by spoonful, to his corpse!

When the blank-eyed young man on the bed had swallowed it all
passively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went back
to her room and closing the door put the washstand against it. She
did nothing theatrical. She went over to the window and stood
looking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the dusk
from green to grey, from grey to black. And over the transom came
again and again monotonously the refrain:

_I--love you o--own--ly,
I love--but--you._

Jane fell on her knees beside the bed and buried her wilful head in
the hand-embroidered pillow, and said a little prayer because she
had found out in time.


III

The full realisation of their predicament came with the dusk. The
electric lights were shut off! Jane, crawling into bed tearfully at
half after eight, turned the reading light switch over her head, but
no flood of rosy radiance poured down on the hand-embroidered pillow
with the pink bow.

Jane sat up and stared round her. Already the outline of her dresser
was faint and shadowy. In half an hour black night would settle down