ane, who was something new, and therefore attractive to
him, besides being thrown so much together in Paris when Jane was working
for her father. The dear child has put up a brave fight ever since the
engagement, and her self-control has been wonderful, but she has not been
her old self. If it had not been for the unfortunate European conditions,
I should have sent her abroad for a thorough change. It was terrible for
her to be on the spot when this awful accident happened.

'My dear, dear child,' I said, hardly able to speak, my voice shook so
with crying. 'I've no words.... Have you rung up Frank and Johnny? I
should like Frank to be with you to-night; I know he would wish it.'

'No,' said Jane. 'It's no use bothering them till to-morrow. They can't
do anything. Is daddy at home?... You'll tell him, then.... Good-night.'

'Oh, my darling, you mustn't ring off yet, indeed you mustn't. Hold on
while I tell daddy; he would hate not to speak to you at once about it.'

'No, he won't need to speak to me. He'll have to get on to the _Haste_ at
once, and arrange a lot of things. I can keep till the morning.
Good-night, mother.'

She rang off. There is something terrible to me about telephone
conversations, when they deal with intimate or tragic subjects; they are
so remote, cold, impersonal, like typed letters; is it because one can't
watch the soul in the eyes of the person one is talking to?

3

I went straight to Percy. He was sitting at his writing table going
through papers. At his side was the black coffee that he always sipped
through the evenings, simmering over a spirit lamp. Percy will never go
up to bed until the small hours; I suppose it is his newspaper training.
If he isn't working, he will sit and read, or sometimes play patience,
and always sip strong coffee, though his doctor has told him he should
give it up. But he is like me; he lives on his nervous energy, reckless
of consequences. He spends himself, and is spent, in the service of his
great press. It was fortunate for him, though I suppose I ought not to
say it, that he married a woman who is also the slave of literature,
though of a more imaginative branch of literature, and who can understand
him. But then that was inevitable; he could never have cared for a
materialistic woman, or a merely domestic woman. He demanded ideas in the
woman to whom he gave himself.

I could hardly bear to tell him the dreadful news. I knew how overcome he
would b