here of love until she could be
returned to her poor young husband. It was naturally too late.

She had not cared to look round Maisie's rooms at first. Now, as soon as
she came in, she perceived, sticking out beyond the bed, a small pair of
feet in high-heeled shoes. Maisie had died in the effort to strap up a
great portmanteau. She had died so grotesquely that her little body had
fallen forward into the trunk, and it had closed upon her, like the jaws
of a gigantic alligator. The key was in her hand. Her dark hair, like
the hair of a Japanese, had come down and covered her body and her face.

Leonora lifted her up--she was the merest featherweight--and laid her
on the bed with her hair about her. She was smiling, as if she had just
scored a goal in a hockey match. You understand she had not committed
suicide. Her heart had just stopped. I saw her, with the long lashes on
the cheeks, with the smile about the lips, with the flowers all about
her. The stem of a white lily rested in her hand so that the spike of
flowers was upon her shoulder. She looked like a bride in the sunlight
of the mortuary candles that were all about her, and the white coifs of
the two nuns that knelt at her feet with their faces hidden might have
been two swans that were to bear her away to kissing-kindness land, or
wherever it is. Leonora showed her to me. She would not let either of
the others see her. She wanted, you know, to spare poor dear Edward's
feelings. He never could bear the sight of a corpse. And, since she
never gave him an idea that Maisie had written to her, he imagined that
the death had been the most natural thing in the world. He soon got over
it. Indeed, it was the one affair of his about which he never felt much
remorse.

PART II

I

THE death of Mrs Maidan occurred on the 4th of August, 1904. And then
nothing happened until the 4th of August, 1913. There is the curious
coincidence of dates, but I do not know whether that is one of those
sinister, as if half jocular and altogether merciless proceedings on the
part of a cruel Providence that we call a coincidence. Because it may
just as well have been the superstitious mind of Florence that forced
her to certain acts, as if she had been hypnotized. It is, however,
certain that the 4th of August always proved a significant date for her.
To begin with, she was born on the 4th of August. Then, on that date, in
the year 1899, she set out with her uncle for the tour roun