the thought of her husband's father. It seemed that her mind could
dwell on his isolation, while powerless to present the truth of her
husband's death to her. By some strange mental operation, not
unbeneficent, she saw his grief more vividly than as yet she felt
her own. She rose presently, quick-eared to wait the call, and
went to her desk in the window. Then she wrote a letter to her
father-in-law, and pictured his ministering at that moment to
his church. Her inclination was to soften the blow, yet she knew
that could only be a cruel kindness. She told him, therefore, that
his son must die. Then she remembered that he was so near. A
telegram must go rather than a letter, and he would be at
Chadlands before nightfall. She destroyed her letter and set about
a telegram. Jane Bond came in, and she asked her to dispatch the
telegram as quickly as possible. Her old nurse, an elderly
spinster, to whom Mary was the first consideration in existence,
had brought her a cup of soup and some toast. It had seemed to
Jane the right thing to do.

Mary thanked her and drank a little. She passed through a mental
phase as of dreaming--a sensation familiar in sleep; but she knew
that this was not a sleeping but a waking experience. She waited
for her father, yet dreaded to hear him return. She thought of
human footsteps and the difference between them. She remembered
that she would never hear Tom's long stride again.

It often broke into a run, she remembered, as he approached her;
and she would often run toward him, too--to banish the space that
separated them. She blamed herself bitterly that she had decreed
to sleep in her old nursery. She had loved it so, and the small
bed that had held her from childhood; yet, if she had slept with