since their return from the river he had not seen Patricia. He was
afraid that Patricia, also, would be upset by this deplorable news.

As he crossed the hall Virginia came out of Patricia's rooms. The
colonel raised his voice in speaking to her, for with age Virginia was
growing very deaf.

"Yaas, suh," she said, "I'm doin' middlin' well, suh, thank yeh, suh.
Jus' took the evenin' mail to Miss Patricy, like I always do, suh." She
went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an
idol's.

He went into Patricia's bedroom. Patricia had been taking an afternoon
nap, and had not risen from the couch, where she lay with three or four
unopened letters upon her breast. Two she had opened and dropped upon
the floor. She seemed not to hear him when he spoke her name, and yet
she was not asleep, because her eyes were partly unclosed.

There was no purple glint in them, as once there had been always. Her
countenance, indeed, showed everywhere less brightly tinted than
normally it should be. Her heavy copper-colored hair, alone undimmed,
seemed, like some parasitic growth (he thought), to sustain its beauty
by virtue of having drained Patricia's body of color and vitality.

There was a newspaper in her right hand, with flamboyant headlines,
because to Lichfield the death of John Charteris was an event of
importance.

Patricia seemed very young. You saw that she had suffered. You knew it
was not fair to hurt a child like that.

But, indeed, Rudolph Musgrave hardly realized as yet that Patricia was
dead. For Colonel Musgrave was thinking of that time when this same
Patricia had first come to him, fire-new from the heart of an ancient
sunset, and he had noted, for the first time, that her hair was like the
reflection of a sunset in rippling waters, and that her mouth was an
inconsiderable trifle, a scrap of sanguine curves, and that her eyes
were purple glimpses of infinity.

"This same Patricia!" he said, aloud.

PART NINE - RELICS

"You have chosen the love 'that lives sans murmurings,
Sans passion,' and incuriously endures
The gradual lapse of time. You have chosen as yours
A level life of little happenings;
And through the long autumnal evenings
Lord Love, no doubt, is of the company,
And hugs your ingleside contentedly,
Smiles at old griefs, and rustles needless wings.

"And yet I think that sometimes memories
Of divers trysts, of blood that urged like wine
On moonli