He nodded understandingly.

“Of poor Wenham!  Many people have told me that.  Of course, you know that we were always appallingly alike, and they always said that we should become more so in middle-age.  After all, there is only a year between us.  We might have been twins.”

“It is the most terrible thing in likenesses I have ever seen,” the woman continued slowly.  “When you entered the room a few seconds ago, it seemed to me that a miracle had happened.  It seemed to me that the dead had come to life.”

“It must have been a shock,” the man murmured, with his eyes upon the tablecloth.

“It was,” she agreed, hoarsely.  “Can’t you see it in my face?  I do not always look like a woman of forty.  Can’t you see the gray shadows that are there?  You see, I admit it frankly.  I was terrified—­I am terrified!”

“And why?” he asked.

“Why?” she repeated, looking at him wonderingly.  “Doesn’t it seem to you a terrible thing to think of the dead coming back to life?”

He tapped lightly upon the tablecloth for a minute with the fingers of one hand.  Then he looked at her again.

“It depends,” he said, “upon the manner of their death.”

An executioner of the Middle Ages could not have played with his victim more skillfully.  The woman was shivering now, preserving some outward appearance of calm only by the most fierce and unnatural effort.

“What do you mean by that, Jerry?” she asked.  “I was not even with—­Wenham, when he was lost.  You know all about it, I suppose,—­how it happened?”

The man nodded thoughtfully.

“I have heard many stories,” he admitted.  “Before we leave the subject for ever, I should like to hear it from you, from your own lips.”

There was a bottle of champagne upon the table, ordered at the commencement of the meal.  She touched her glass; the waiter filled it.  She raised it to her lips and set it down empty.  Her fingers were clutching the tablecloth.

“You ask me a hard thing, Jerry,” she said.  “It is not easy to talk of anything so painful.  From the moment we left New York, Wenham was strange.  He drank a good deal upon the steamer.  He used to talk sometimes in the most wild way.  We came to London.  He had an attack of delirium tremens.  I nursed him through it and took him into the country, down into Cornwall.  We took a small cottage on the outskirts of a fishing village—­St. Catherine’s, the place was called.  There we lived quietly for a time.  Sometimes he was better, sometimes worse.  The doctor in the village was very kind and came often to see him.  He brought a friend from the neighboring town and they agreed that with complete rest Wenham would soon be better.  All the time my life was a miserable one.  He was not fit to be alone and yet he was a terrible companion.  I did my best.  I was with him half of every day, sometimes longer.  I was with him till my own health began to suffer.  At last I could stand the solitude no longer.  I sent for my father.  He came and lived with us.”