The old man, thus started on reminiscence, continued, somewhat garrulous, and Paul, sunk in the armchair by the fire, listened indulgently, waiting for Jane.  She, meanwhile, was occupied upstairs and in the library answering telephone messages and sending word out to callers by the maid.  For, on the heels of Paul, as Barney Bill had said, many had come on errand of inquiry and condolence and all the news agencies and newspapers of London seemed to be on the telephone.  Some of the latter tried for speech with the newly elected candidate whom they understood to be in the house, but Jane denied them firmly.  She had had some training as a politician’s private secretary.  At last the clanging bell ceased ringing, and the maid ceased running to and from the street door, and the doctor had come and given his certificate and gone, and Jane joined the pair in the dining-room.  She brought in from the hall a tray of visiting cards and set it on the table.  “I suppose it was kind of them all to come,” she said.

She sat down listlessly in a straight-backed chair, and then, at a momentary end of her fine strength suddenly broke into tears and sobs and buried her head on her arms.  Paul rose, bent over her and clasped her shoulders comfortingly.  Presently she turned and blindly sought his embrace.  He raised her to her feet, and they stood as they had done years ago, when, boy and girl, they had come to the parting of their ways.  She cried silently for a while, and then she said miserably:  “I’ve only you left, dear.”

In this hour of spent effort and lassitude it was a queer physical comfort, very pure and sweet, to feel the close contact of her young, strong body.  She, too, out of the wreck, was all that he had left.  His clasp tightened, and he murmured soothing words.

“Oh, my dear, I am so tired,” she said, giving herself up, for her part also, to the foolish solace of his arms.  “I wish I could stay here always, Paul.”

He whispered:  “Why not?”

Indeed, why not?  Instinct spoke.  His people were her people and her people his.  And she had proved herself a brave, true woman.  Before him no longer gleamed the will-o’-the-wisp leading him a fantastic dance through life.  Before him lay only darkness.  Jane and he, hand in hand, could walk through it fearless and undismayed.  And her own great love, shown unashamed in the abandonment of this moment of intense emotion’ made his pulses throb.  He whispered again:  “Why not?”

For answer she nestled closer. “if only you could love me a little, little bit?”

“But I do,” said Paul hoarsely.

She shook her head and sobbed afresh, and they stood in close embrace at the end of the room by the door, regardless of the presence of the old man who sat, his back to them, smoking his pipe and looking, with his birdlike crook of the neck, meditatively into the fire.  “No, no,” said Jane, at last.  “It’s silly of me.  Forgive me.  We mustn’t talk of such things.  Neither of us is fit to—­and to-night it’s not becoming.  I have lost my father and you are only my brother, Paul dear.”