“But, my dearest, she may not be in the water!  She may have dropped the light and been feared to go further without it, and gone into one of those wee byres on the marshes till the morning, and not have wakened yet!”

He laughed sleepily, softly.  “Yes, certainly she’s not wakened yet.”

“But, my own dear, it may be so!  She may be with us at any moment now!”

He shook his head obstinately.  “No.  She’s dead.  I know she’s dead.  There’s something like silence lying over everything.  It means she’s dead.”

It was her impulse to throw her arms about his neck and bid him weep if he wished on her breast, but feeling his stillness, his nearly unbreathing immobility, she kept herself from him.  To those who fall and hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously stricken by a disease one sits and waits.

“Sit down and take a bit of breakfast,” she bade him softly.  He sank into a chair at the table, lumpishly, as if his limbs had grown thick and lithic, while she poured out a cup of tea and cut some ham.  Her flesh was weeping for Marion, who had been quick, who now was dead; but the core of her was a void.  She cut him a nice feathery slice, unbroken all the way from the bone to the outer rim of bread-crumb-freckled fat; and through the void there shot the thought, trivial yet tremendously exultant:  “Now that Marion is gone I shall always look after his food.”  He drew his brows together and groaned softly.  Hawkishly she looked round to see what was distressing him.  It was, of course, Roger howling in Poppy’s lap....  “Oh, my darling mummie!” It must be stopped.

“Roger,” she said kindly, “sit forward for your breakfast.”

He raised a dispirited nose, red with weeping, and shook his head mournfully.  “No, thank you.  It wouldn’t be of any use.  I couldn’t keep a thing on my stomach.”

“But what about Miss Poppy?” she asked guilefully.  “She must be wearying for her breakfast after the night she’s spent in that chair.”

That brought him off his feet, as she had known it would.  “Oh, poor Poppy!” he cried.  “Oh, poor Poppy!” and led her to the table.

Richard ate and drank for some moments; he seemed very hungry.  Then he laid down his knife and fork and said:  “Ellen, when your mother died did you feel like this?  As if ... the walls of your life had fallen in?”

“Yes, yes, my love, so terribly alone.”

“Alone, alone,” he repeated.  “I am so selfish.  I can think of nothing but my own loneliness.  I can’t think of her.”

“Well, never heed, my dear, my own dear.  She wouldn’t want you to worry.”

“Oh, but I must think this out!” he exclaimed in a shocked, dreary tone.  “It’s so important....”  He looked up at the electric light and grumbled:  “Oh, that damned light makes it worse!” and rose to restore the room to the sallowness of the morning.

When he sat down again he would not eat, but leaned his head on his hands and his elbows on the table and watched the other two.  Poppy was saying in tones half-maternal, half-disagreeable:  “Eat up your ’am, you silly cuckoo.  You know if you don’t you’ll have one of your sick turns,” and Roger was obeying.  Tears and the ham collided noisily in his throat.