ttice had gone: she had been destroyed as utterly as though a sinister
and ruthless magic had blasted every infinitesimal quality that had been
hers. A countenance the color of glazed white paper seemed to hold pools
of ink in the hollows of its eyes. The drawn mouth was the color of stale
milk. Nothing remained to summon either pity or sorrow. The only possible
emotion in the face of that revolting human disaster was an incredulous
and shocked surprise. It struck like a terrible jest, a terrible, icy
reminder, into the forgetful warmth of living; it mocked at the supposed
majesty of suffering, tore aside the assumed dignity, the domination, of
men; it tampered ferociously with the beauty, the pride, the innocent and
gracious pretensions, of youth, of women.

Gordon Makimmon was conscious of an overwhelming desire to flee from the
white grimace on the bed that had been Lettice's and his. He drew back, in
a momentary, abject, shameful cowardice; then he forced himself to
return.... The fleering lips quivered, there was a slight stir under the
counterpane. A little sound gathered, shaped into words barely audible in
the stillness of the room broken only by Gordon's breathing:

"It's ... too much. Not any more ... hurting. Oh! I can't--"

He found a chair, and sat down by her side. The palms of his hands were
wet, and he wiped them upon his knees. His fear of the supine figure grew,
destroying the arrogance of his manhood, his sentient reason. He was
afraid of what it intimated, threatened, for himself, and of its
unsupportable mockery. He felt as an animal might feel cornered by a
hugely grim and playful cruelty.

The westering sun fell through a window on the disordered huddle of
Lettice's hastily discarded clothes streaming from a chair to the
floor--her stockings, her chemise threaded with a narrow blue ribband. His
thoughts turned to the little white garments she had fashioned in vain.

It had been wonderfully comfortable in the evening in the sitting room
with Lettice sewing. He recalled the time when he had first played the
phonograph in order to hear the dog "sing." Lettice had cried out,
imploring him to stop; well--he had stopped, hadn't he? The delayed
realization of her patience of misery rankled like a barb. The wandering
thoughts returned to the long fabrication he had told her of the loss of
his money in Stenton, of the fictitious agent of hardware. He had snared
the girl in a net of such lies; scornful o