have they done to you that you can't see?"

VI

He went away the following week to the North, and remained there for
six months. His honor prescribed a considerable term of absence. It
compelled him to keep away from her for some time after his return.
He told himself that she had the consolation of her gift.

Meanwhile no sign of it had reached him since the day he left her.
Julia could give him no news of her; she believed, but was not
certain, that Freda was away. When he called in Montagu Street he
was told that Miss Farrar had given up her rooms and gone abroad.

He wrote to the address given him, and heard from her by return. She
told him that she was very well; that San Remo was very beautiful;
that she was sure he would be glad to hear that a small income had
been left to her, enough to relieve her from the necessity of
writing--she had not, in fact, written a line in the last
year--otherwise, of course, he would have heard from her. "It rather
looks," she added, "as if poverty had been my inspiration."

In every word he read her desire to spare him.

It had not stayed with her, then? The slender flame had died in her,
the sudden spirit had fled. Well, if it had to go, it was better
that it should go this way, all at once, rather than that they
should have had to acknowledge any falling-off from the delicate
perfection of her gift.

Three months later a letter from his friend, Mrs. Dysart, informed
him of Freda's death at San Remo early in the spring.

Mrs. Dysart had seen her there. She was now staying with her niece,
Julia Nethersole, and desired to see him. She was sure that he would
want to hear about their friend.

He remembered Mrs. Dysart as a small, robust, iron-gray
woman--sharp-tongued, warm-hearted, terrifically observant. Though
childless, she had always struck him as almost savagely maternal.
He dreaded the interview, for he had had some vague idea that she
had not appreciated Freda. Besides, his connection with Miss Farrar
was so public that Mrs. Dysart would have no delicacy in approaching
it.

Mrs. Dysart proved more reticent than he had feared. The full flow
of her reminiscences began only under pressure.

The news of Miss Farrar's death, she said, came to her as a shock,
but hardly as a surprise.

"You were not with her, then?" he said.

"No one was with her."

The words dropped into a terrible silence. A sound broke it, the
sound of some uneasy movement made by Julia.