Mrs Lawford sighed. 'A broken night is really very little to a
mother,' she said. 'He is still asleep. He hasn't, I think,
stirred all night.'

'Not stirred!' Mr Bethany repeated. 'You baffle me. And you have
watched?'

'Oh no,' was the cheerful answer; 'I felt that quiet, solitude;
space, was everything; he preferred it so. He--he changed alone,
I suppose. Don't you think it almost stands to reason that he
will be alone...when he comes back? Was I right? But there, it's
useless, it's worse than useless, to talk like this. My husband
is gone. Some terrible thing has happened. Whatever the mystery
may be, he will never come back alive. My only fear is that I am
dragging you into a matter that should from the beginning have
been entrusted to-- Oh, it's monstrous!' It appeared for a moment
as if she were blinking to keep back her tears, yet her scrutiny
seemed merely to harden.

Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish
eyes of her visitor answered the challenge. He stood small and
black, peeping fixedly out of the window at the sunflecked
laurels.

'Last night,' he said slowly, 'when I said good-bye to your
husband, on the tip of my tongue were the words I have used, in
season and out of season, for nearly forty-five years--"God knows
best." Well, my dear lady, a sense of humour, a sense of
reverence, or perhaps even a taint of scepticism--call it what