"Are you there?" he said, quite hopelessly, merely as a matter of
form--of very common form--and well-nigh fell to the ground when he
received the reply:

"Yes, yes, but I have just been telegraphed for to go to Beaulieu; my
mother is very ill."

"What is the matter with her?" he asked; and she replied:

"Inflammation of the lungs--but I must stop; I can't speak any more."
Then came some sobs and silence.

That same afternoon, by Mary's direction, the aerophone was brought back
to him in a dog-cart, and three days later he heard that her mother,
Mrs. Porson, was dead.

Some months passed, and when they met again, on her return from the
Riviera, Morris found his cousin changed. She had parted from him a
child, and now, beneath the shadow of the wings of grief, suddenly
she had become a woman. Moreover, the best and frankest part of their
intimacy seemed to have vanished. There was a veil between them. Mary
thought of little, and at this time seemed to care for no one except
her mother, who was dead. And Morris, who had loved the child, recoiled
somewhat from the new-born woman. It may be explained that he was afraid
of women. Still, with an eye to business, he spoke to her about the
aerophone; and, so far as her memory served her, she confirmed all the
details of their short conversation across the gulf of empty space.

"You see," he said, trembling with excitement, "I have got it at last."