said Gertrude, and she took the letter from her
corsage and began to read it. She got as far as "I can't stand this
awful Five Towns district," and then she stopped.

"Well, go on," Lady Bargrave encouraged her.

"No," said Gertrude, and she put the letter in the fire. "The fact is,"
she said, going to Lady Bargrave's chair, "it was too cruel. I hadn't
realized.... I must have been very worked-up.... One does work oneself
up.... Things seem a little different now...." She glanced at her
companion.

"Why, Gertrude, you're crying, dearest!"

"What a chance it was!" murmured Gertrude, in her tears. "What a chance!
Because, you know, if he _had_ once read it I would never have gone back
on it. I'm that sort of woman. But as it is, there's a sort of hope of a
sort of happiness, isn't there?"

"Gertrude!" It was Sir Cloud's voice, gentle and tender, outside the
door.

"Mercy on us!" exclaimed Lady Bargrave. "It's half-past one. Bargrave
will have been asleep long since."

Gertrude kissed her in silence, opened the door, and left her.

THE GLIMPSE[A]

I

When I was dying I had no fear. I was simply indifferent, partly, no
doubt, through exhaustion caused by my long illness. It was a warm
evening in August. We ought to have been at Blackpool, of course, but we
were in my house in Trafalgar Road, and the tramcars between Hanley and
Bursley were shaking the house just as usual. Perhaps not quite as
usual; for during my illness I had noticed that a sort of tiredness, a
soft, nice feeling, seems to come over everything at sunset of a hot
summer's day. This universal change affected even the tramcars, so that
they rolled up and down the hill more gently. Or it may have been merely
my imagination. Through the open windows I could see, dimly, the smoke
of the Cauldon Bar Iron Works slowly crossing the sky in front of the
sunset. Margaret sat in my grandfather's oak chair by the gas-stove.
There was only Margaret, besides the servant, in the house; the nurse
had been obliged to go back to Pirehill Infirmary for the night. I don't
know why. Moreover, it didn't matter.

[Footnote A: Some years ago the editor of _Black and White_ commissioned
me to write a story for his Christmas Number. I wrote this story. He
expressed a deep personal admiration for it, but said positively that he
would not dare to offer it to his readers. I withdrew the story, and
gave him instead a frolic tale about a dentist. (See page 136.)
After