I never properly belonged.  When I saw you and Lucy together, I knew we didn’t belong, not like that; we didn’t properly understand each other’s ways and thoughts, like you two did.  I love Lucy, too.  You and she are so like.  And she’ll be good to Baby; she said she would.  I hate to leave Baby, but Guy won’t let me bring him, and anyhow I suppose I couldn’t, because he’s yours.  I’ve written a list of his feeds, and it’s on the chimney-piece behind the clock; please make whoever sees to him go by it or he gets a pain.  Please be careful when you bath him; I think Mrs. Adams had better do it usually.  She’ll take care of him for you, or Peggy will, perhaps.  You’ll think I never cared for him, but I do, I love him, only I must love Guy most of all.  I don’t know if I shall be happy or miserable, but I expect miserable, only I must go with Guy.  Please, dear Peter, try and understand this, and forgive me.  I think you will, because you always do understand things, and forgive them too; I think you are the kindest person I ever knew.  If I thought you loved me really, I don’t think I’d go, even for Guy; but I know you’ve only felt kindly to me all along, so I think it is best for you too that I should go, and you will be thankful in the end.  Good-bye.  You promised mother to see after me, I know, for she told me before she died; well, you’ve done your best, and mother’d be grateful to you if she could know.  I suppose some would say she does know, perhaps; but I don’t believe those stories; I believe it’s all darkness beyond, and silence.  And if it is, we must try and get all the light and warmth here that we can.  So I’m going.

“Good-bye, Peter.

“Rhoda.”

Peter read it through, sitting on the rug by the fire.  When he had finished it, he put it into the fire and watched it burn.  Then he sighed, and sat very still for a while, his hands clasped round one knee.

Presently he got up and looked behind the clock, and saw that the next feeding-time was due now.  So he rang for Mrs. Adams, the landlady, and asked her if she would mind bringing Thomas’s bottle.

When Thomas had it, Peter stood and looked down upon him as he drank with ill-bred noises.

“Gently, Thomas:  you’ll choke.  You’ll choke and die, I know you will.  Then you’ll be gone too.  Everything goes, Thomas.  Everything I touch breaks; everything I try to do fails.  That’s because I’m such an ass, I suppose.  I did think I could perhaps make one little unlucky girl decently happy; but I couldn’t, you see.  So she’s gone after light and warmth, and she’ll—­she’ll break her heart in a year, and it’ll be my fault.  Follow her?  No, I shan’t do that.  I shouldn’t find her, and if I did what would be the use?  If she must go, she must; she was only eating her heart out here; and perhaps it’s better to break one’s heart on something than eat it out in emptiness.  No, it isn’t better in this case.  Anything in the world would have