“I cannot say.  The sea is there; he naturally loves the sea.  But I have never seen him standing on the promontory.”

“Which way do his windows look?”

“Towards the sea.”

“Therefore towards the promontory?”

“Yes.”

“Can he see it from his bed?”

“No.  Perhaps that is the cause of a peculiar habit he has.”

“What habit?”

“Every night before he retires (he is not yet confined to his bed) he stands for a few minutes in his front window looking out.  He says it’s his good-night to the ocean.  When he no longer does this, we shall know that his end is very near.”

The face of Violet began to clear.  Rising, she turned on the electric light, and then, reseating herself, remarked with an aspect of quiet cheer: 

“I have two ideas; but they necessitate my presence at your place.  You will not mind a visit?  My brother will accompany me.”

Roger Upjohn did not need to speak, hardly to make a gesture; his expression was so eloquent.

She thanked him as if he had answered in words, adding with an air of gentle reserve:  “Providence assists us in this matter.  I am invited to Beverly next week to attend a wedding.  I was intending to stay two days, but I will make it three and spend the extra one with you.”

“What are your requirements, Miss Strange?  I presume you have some.”

Violet turned from the imposing portrait of Mr. Upjohn which she had been gravely contemplating, and met the troubled eye of her young host with an enigmatical flash of her own.  But she made no answer in words.  Instead, she lifted her right hand and ran one slender finger thoughtfully up the casing of the door near which they stood till it struck a nick in the old mahogany almost on a level with her head.

“Is your son Roger old enough to reach so far?” she asked with another short look at him as she let her finger rest where it had struck the roughened wood.  “I thought he was a little fellow.”

“He is.  That cut was made by—­by my wife; a sample of her capricious willfulness.  She wished to leave a record of herself in the substance of our house as well as in our lives.  That nick marks her height.  She laughed when she made it.  ’Till the walls cave in or burn,’ is what she said.  And I thought her laugh and smile captivating.”

Cutting short his own laugh which was much too sardonic for a lady’s ears, he made a move as if to lead the way into another portion of the room.  But Violet failed to notice this, and lingering in quiet contemplation of this suggestive little nick,—­ the only blemish in a room of ancient colonial magnificence,—­ she thoughtfully remarked: 

“Then she was a small woman?” adding with seeming irrelevance—­ “like myself.”

Roger winced.  Something in the suggestion hurt him, and in the nod he gave there was an air of coldness which under ordinary circumstances would have deterred her from pursuing this subject further.  But the circumstances were not ordinary, and she allowed herself to say: