ake your hat.'

Miss Fowler, moving stiffly from the hip, stamped her rubber-tipped
stick on the tiled hall floor. 'Mary, aren't you _anything_ except a
companion? Would you _ever_ have been anything except a companion?'

Mary hung up the garden hat on its proper peg. 'No,' she said after
consideration. 'I don't imagine I ever should. But I've no imagination,
I'm afraid.'

She fetched Miss Fowler her eleven-o'clock glass of Contrexeville.

That was the wet December when it rained six inches to the month, and
the women went abroad as little as might be. Wynn's flying chariot
visited them several times, and for two mornings (he had warned her by
postcard) Mary heard the thresh of his propellers at dawn. The second
time she ran to the window, and stared at the whitening sky. A little
blur passed overhead. She lifted her lean arms towards it.

That evening at six o'clock there came an announcement in an official
envelope that Second Lieutenant W. Fowler had been killed during a trial
flight. Death was instantaneous. She read it and carried it to
Miss Fowler.

'I never expected anything else,' said Miss Fowler; 'but I'm sorry it
happened before he had done anything.'

The room was whirling round Mary Postgate, but she found herself quite
steady in the midst of it.

'Yes,' she said. 'It's a great pity he didn't die in action after he had
killed somebody.'

'He was killed instantly. That's one comfort,' Miss Fowler went on.

'But Wynn says the shock of a fall kills a man at once--whatever happens
to the tanks,' quoted Mary.

The room was coming to rest now. She heard Miss Fowler say impatiently,
'But why can't we cry, Mary?' and herself replying, 'There's nothing to
cry for. He has done his duty as much as Mrs. Grant's son did.'

'And when he died, _she_ came and cried all the morning,' said Miss
Fowler. 'This only makes me feel tired--terribly tired. Will you help me
to bed, please, Mary?--And I think I'd like the hot-water bottle.'

So Mary helped her and sat beside, talking of Wynn in his riotous youth.

'I believe,' said Miss Fowler suddenly, 'that old people and young
people slip from under a stroke like this. The middle-aged feel
it most.'

'I expect that's true,' said Mary, rising. 'I'm going to put away the
things in his room now. Shall we wear mourning?'

'Certainly not,' said Miss Fowler. 'Except, of course, at the funeral. I
can't go. You will. I want you to arrange about his being buried here.
W