was addressed. A moment later I heard his voice from an adjacent
corridor; 'Has the doctor gone?' it asked. I did not hear the answer.
But a minute or two later a tall man in a frock coat entered the room
and walked up to me. I could see the top of a stethoscope protruding
from one of his inner breast-coat pockets.

'Name of Freydon?' he said tersely.

'Yes.'

'Ah! Will you step this way, please, to my room?'

And, as we passed into an inner room, he wheeled upon me with a look
of grave sympathy in his eyes. 'I have serious news for you, Mr.
Freydon; if--if it is your wife who is here.'

Then I knew. Something in the doctor's grave eyes and meaning voice
told me. It was not really necessary for me to ask. I knew quite
certainly, and had no wish, no intention to say anything. My
subconscious self apparently was bent upon explicitness. For, next
moment, I heard my own voice, some little distance from me, saying, in
quite a low tone:

'My God! My God! My God!' And then: 'You don't mean that she is dead?'

But I knew all the time.

Then I heard the doctor speaking. His body was close to me, but his
voice, like my own, came from some distance away.

'A woman was brought here by a constable this afternoon ...
helpless ... intoxication.... Did your wife ... is she addicted to
drink?' I may have nodded. 'There was a pawnticket in the name of
Freydon.... She passed away less than an hour ago.... The condition ...
heart undoubtedly accelerated ... alcoholism ... a very short time, in
any case.... Medically, an inquest would be quite unnecessary, but....
Will you come with me, and ...'

From a long way off now these phrases trickled into my consciousness,
the sense of them somewhat blurred and interrupted by a continuous
buzzing noise in my head. We walked along dead white passages, and
down steps. We stopped at length where a man in uniform stood at a
door, which he opened for us at a sign from the doctor. Inside, a
woman was bending over a low pallet, and on the little bed was my wife
Fanny. A greyish sheet was drawn over her body to the chin. I think it
was so drawn up as we entered the room. I stared down upon Fanny's
calm, white face, in which there was now a refinement, a pathetic
dignity, a something delicate and womanly which I had not seen there
before; not even in the early days, when gentle prettiness had been
its quality.

The thought that flashed through my mind as I stood there was not the
sort of tho