t the
staring eyes had not recognized him at all. Then he realized from the
look in them that who or what he was made singularly little difference
now to Mr. Piper. "Water!" croaked Mr. Piper. "Water! I've shot her.
Oh, poor Rose, poor Rose!" and he was plucking at her dress again with
absorbed, incapable fingers.

Oliver looked around him. The gun. There must have been a gun. Where? Oh
_there_--and as he picked it up from under a chair he did so with much
inward reverence in spite of the haste he took to it, for he felt as if
it were all the next forty years of his life made little into something
cold and small and of metal that he was lifting like a doll from the
floor.

"Water," said Mr. Piper again and quite horribly. "Water for Rose."

It was only when he had gone back to the kitchen and started looking
for glasses that he realized that Mrs. Severance might very possibly be
dying out there in the other room. Till then the mere fact that he was
not dying himself had been too large in his vision to give him time
to develop proper sympathy for others. When he did, though, he hurried
bunglingly, in spite of a nervous flash in which after accidentally
touching the revolver in his pocket he almost threw it through the pane
of the nearest window before he considered. A moment, though, and he was
back with a spilling tumbler.

"Water," said Mr. Piper with querulous satisfaction. "Give her water."
Oliver hesitated. "Where's she shot?" he said sharply.

"I don't know. Oh, I don't know. But I shot her. I shot her. Poor Rose."

It was certainly odd, there being no blood about, thought Oliver
detachedly. Internal wounds? Possibly, but even so. He dipped his
fingers in the glass of water, bent over Mrs. Severance and sprinkled
the drops as near her closed eyelids as possible. No sound came from her
and not a muscle of her body moved, but the delicate skin of the eyelids
shivered momentarily. Oliver drew a long breath and stepped back.

"She's dead," said Mr. Piper. "She's dead." And he began to weep, very
quietly with a mouselike sound and the slow horrible tears of age. "No
use trying water on her," said Oliver loudly, and again he thought
he saw the skin of the eyelids twitch a little. "Is there any brandy
here--anything like that, Mr. Piper?"

"K-kitchen," said Mr. Piper with a sniff and one of his hands came away
from Mrs. Severance to fumble for a key.

"I'll go get it," said Oliver, still rather loudly, and took