ids. She was with him still. He bent and kissed her passionately.
But there was coldness against his mouth. He bit his lips with horror.
Looking at her, he felt he could never, never let her go. No! He stroked
the hair from her temples. That, too, was cold. He saw the mouth so dumb
and wondering at the hurt. Then he crouched on the floor, whispering to
her:

"Mother, mother!"

He was still with her when the undertakers came, young men who had
been to school with him. They touched her reverently, and in a quiet,
businesslike fashion. They did not look at her. He watched jealously. He
and Annie guarded her fiercely. They would not let anybody come to see
her, and the neighbours were offended.

After a while Paul went out of the house, and played cards at a
friend's. It was midnight when he got back. His father rose from the
couch as he entered, saying in a plaintive way:

"I thought tha wor niver comin', lad."

"I didn't think you'd sit up," said Paul.

His father looked so forlorn. Morel had been a man without fear--simply
nothing frightened him. Paul realised with a start that he had been
afraid to go to bed, alone in the house with his dead. He was sorry.

"I forgot you'd be alone, father," he said.

"Dost want owt to eat?" asked Morel.

"No."

"Sithee--I made thee a drop o' hot milk. Get it down thee; it's cold
enough for owt."

Paul drank it.

After a while Morel went to bed. He hurried past the closed door, and
left his own door open. Soon the son came upstairs also. He went in to
kiss her good-night, as usual. It was cold and dark. He wished they had
kept her fire burning. Still she dreamed her young dream. But she would
be cold.

"My dear!" he whispered. "My dear!"

And he did not kiss her, for fear she should be cold and strange to him.
It eased him she slept so beautifully. He shut her door softly, not to
wake her, and went to bed.

In the morning Morel summoned his courage, hearing Annie downstairs and
Paul coughing in the room across the landing. He opened her door, and
went into the darkened room. He saw the white uplifted form in the
twilight, but her he dared not see. Bewildered, too frightened to
possess any of his faculties, he got out of the room again and left her.
He never looked at her again. He had not seen her for months, because he
had not dared to look. And she looked like his young wife again.

"Have you seen her?" Annie asked of him sharply after breakfast.

"Yes," he said