March, or April; anyhow it was a premature
spring-like day, and he had left off his overcoat. That evening he
went to the Odeon, and when, after the play he joined us for supper at
the Bleu, he said he thought he had caught a cold, and ordered hot
grog. The next day he did not turn up at all; so several of us, after
dinner, presented ourselves at his lodgings in Montparnasse. We found
him in bed, with Nina reading to him. He was feverish, and Nina had
insisted that he should stop at home. He would be all right to-morrow.
He scoffed at our suggestion that he should see a doctor; he was one
of those men who affect to despise the medical profession. But early
on the following morning a commissionnaire brought me a note from
Nina. 'My father is very much worse. Can you come at once?' He was
delirious. Poor Nina, white, with frightened eyes, moved about like
one distracted. We sent off for Dr. Renoult, we had in a Sister of
Charity. Everything that could be done was done. Till the very end,
none of us for a moment doubted that he would recover. It was
impossible to conceive that that strong, affirmative life could be
extinguished. And even after the end had come, the end with its ugly
suite of material circumstances, I don't think any of us realised what
it meant. It was as if we had been told that one of the forces of
Nature had become inoperative. And Nina, through it all, was like some
pale thing in marble, that breathed and moved: white, dazed, helpless,
with aching, incredulous eyes, suffering everything, understanding
nothing.

When it came to the worst of the dreadful necessary businesses that
followed, some of us somehow, managed to draw her from the
death-chamber into another room, and to keep her there, while others
of us got it over. It was snowing that afternoon, I remember, a
melancholy, hesitating snowstorm, with large moist flakes that
fluttered down irresolutely, and presently disintegrated into rain;
but we had not far to go. Then we returned to Nina, and for many days
and nights we never dared to leave her. You will guess whether the
question of her future, especially of her immediate future, weighed
heavily upon our minds. In the end, however, it appeared to have
solved itself--though I can't pretend that the solution was exactly
all we could have wished.

Her father had a half-brother (we learned this from his papers),
incumbent of rather an important living in the north of England. We
also learned tha