How strange and sad that she should be still in ignorance of his loss and hers!  In the early morning after Marie’s death, when he woke up from a few heavy hours of sleep, his mind had been full of her.  How was the news to be broken to her?  He himself did not feel that he could leave his brother-in-law.  There was a strong regard and sympathy between them; and his presence in the house of mourning would undoubtedly be useful to Paul for a while; besides, there were Marie’s words—­’Will you stay with him a few days—­after—?’—­which were binding on him.  He must write, then; but it was only to be hoped that no newspaper would bring her the news before his letter could reach.

However, as the day wore on, Paul came noiselessly out of the quiet room where the white shrouded form seemed still to spread a tender presence round it, and said to Eustace with dry, piteous lips: 

’I have remembered Miss Bretherton; you must go to her to-morrow, after—­the funeral’

‘I can’t bear the thought of leaving you,’ said Kendal, laying a brotherly hand on his shoulder, ‘Let me write to-day.’

Paul shook his head.  ’She has been ill.  Any way it will be a great shock; but if you go it will be better.’

Kendal resisted a little more, but it seemed as if Marie’s motherly carefulness over the bright creature who had charmed her had passed into Paul.  He was saying what Marie would have said, taking thought as she would have taken it for one she loved, and it was settled as he wished.

When his long pacing in the Champs Elysees was over Kendal went back to find Paul busy with his wife’s letters and trinkets, turning them over With a look of shivering forlornness, as though the thought of the uncompanioned lifetime to come were already closing upon him like some deadly chill in the air.  Beside him lay two miniature cases open; one of them was the case which Eustace had received from his sister’s hand on the afternoon before her death, and both of them contained identical portraits of Marie in her first brilliant womanhood.

‘Do you remember them?’ Paul said in his husky Voice, pointing them out to him.  ’They were done when you were at college and she was twenty-three.  Your mother had two taken—­one for herself and one for your old aunt Marion.  Your mother left me hers when she died, and your aunt’s copy of it came back to us last year.  Tell Miss Bretherton its history.  She will prize it.  It is the best picture still.’

Kendal made a sign of assent and took the case.  Paul rose and stood beside him, mechanically spreading out his hands to the fire.

’To-morrow, as soon as you are gone, I shall go off to Italy.  There are some little places in the south near Naples that she was very fond of.  I shall stay about there for a while.  As soon as I feel I can, I shall come back to the Senate and my work.  It is the only thing left me,—­she was so keen about it.’  His voice sank into a whisper, and a long silence fell upon them.  Women in moments of sorrow have the outlet of tears and caresses; men’s great refuge is silence; but the silence may be charged with sympathy and the comfort of a shared grief.  It was so in this case.