ad."

"Not very?"

"No, only I felt a little twinge, and thought I had better go to bed. I
am quite comfortable now. I think I shall go to sleep. I am sorry to
leave you alone all the evening, Tom."

"That's right," called Gordon. His voice rang harsh, in spite of his
effort to control it. He threw his arm over his eyes, and fairly groped
his way back to his office, stifling his sobs. When he was in his office
he flung himself into a chair, and bent his head over his hands on the
table, and his whole frame shook. "Oh, my God!" he muttered. "Oh, my
God!" He did not weep, but he gasped like a child whom his mother has
commanded not to weep. Terrible emotion fairly convulsed him. He
struggled with it as with a visible foe. At last he sat up and filled
his pipe. The dog had crept close to him, and was nestling against him
and whimpering. Gordon patted his head. The dog licked his hand.

The simple, ignorant sympathy of this poor speechless thing nearly
unnerved the man again, but he continued to smoke. He looked at the dog,
whose honest brown eyes were fixed upon him with an almost uncanny
understanding, and reflected how the woman upstairs, who was passing out
of his life, had become in a few days so associated with the animal,
that after she was gone he could never see him without a pang. He
looked about the office, with whose belongings she was less associated
than with anything in the house, and it seemed to him that everything
even there would have for him, after she had passed, a terrible sting of
reminiscence. It seemed to him, as he looked about, as if she were
already gone. He was, in fact, suffering as keenly in anticipation as he
would in reality. The horror, the worst horror of life, of being left
alive with the dead and the associations of the dead was already upon
him. Some people are comforted by such associations, others they rend.
Gordon was one whom they would rend, whom they did rend. He made up his
mind, as he sat there, that he would have to go away from Alton, and
enter new scenes for the healing of his spirit, and yet he knew that he
should not go: that at the last his courage would assert itself.

He sat smoking, the dog's head on his knee. There was not a sound to be
heard in the house. Emma, the maid, had gone away to visit a sick
sister. She might not be back that night. So there was absolute silence,
even in the kitchen. Suddenly the dog lifted his head and listened to
something which Gordon