In the soft flicker of the gaslight Margar lay in unearthly beauty, the shadow of her dark eyelashes touching her cheek, a smile lingering on her baby mouth.  She had been such a happy baby; Martie had loved to rumple and kiss the aureole of bright hair that framed the sleeping face.

The old double-gown—­with the middle button that did not match—­ Martie had ironed only yesterday.  She would not iron it again.  The rag doll, and the strings of spools, and the shabby high-chair where Margar sat curling her little bare toes on summer mornings; these must vanish.  The little feet were still.  Gone!

Gone, in an hour, all the dreaming and hoping.  No Margar in a cleaned coat would run about the decks of the steamer—­

Martie pressed her hand over her dry and burning eyes.  She wondered that she could think of these things and not go mad.

The days went by; time did not stop.  Wallace remained ill; Teddy had a cold, too.  Mrs. Converse and John and Adele were there, all sympathetic, all helpful.  They were telling Martie that she must keep up for the others.  She must drink this; she must lie down.

Presently the front room, so terribly occupied, was more terribly empty.  Little Margaret Bannister was laid beside little Mary and Rose and Paul Converse at Mount Kisco.  Children, many of them, died thus every year, and life went on.  Martie had the perfect memory, and the memory of Adele’s tears, of Mrs. Converse’s tears, of John’s agony of sympathy.

Then they all went out of her life as suddenly as they had entered it.  Only the old doctor came steadily, because of Teddy’s cold and Wallace’s cold.  Martie worked over their trays, read fairy-tales to Teddy, read the newspaper to Wallace, said that she felt well, she had eaten a good lunch, she was sleeping well.

When the first suspicion of Wallace’s condition came to her she was standing in the kitchen, waiting for a kettle to boil, and staring dully out into a world of frozen bareness.  Margaret had been with her a week ago; a week ago it had been her privilege to catch the warm little form to her heart, to kiss the aureole of gold, to listen to the shaken gurgle of baby laughter—­

The doctor came out from Wallace’s room; Martie, still wrapped in her thoughts, listened to him absently. ... pneumonia.  Suddenly she came to herself with a shock, repeating the word.  Pneumonia?  What was he saying?  But, Doctor—­but Doctor—­is Mr. Bannister so ill?

He was very ill; gravely ill.  The fact that taken in time, and fought with every weapon, the disease had gained, augured badly.  Martie listened in stupefaction.

She suggested a nurse.  The old doctor smiled at her affectionately.  Perhaps to-morrow, if he was no better, they might consider it.  Meanwhile, he was in excellent hands.

A strange, silent day followed.  Martie looked at her husband now with that augmented concern that such a warning brings.  He slept, waked, smiled at her, was not hungry.  His big hand, when she touched it, was hot.  Teddy, coughing, and with oil-saturated flannel over his chest, played with his blocks and listened to fairy-tales.  Outside, a bitter cold wind swept the empty streets.  Her husband ill, perhaps dying, Margar gone; it was all unreal and unconvincing.