-any soothing possible! No music. I will return
in a few hours.'

He went on foot.

Mr. Barmby begged advice from Colney and Simeon concerning the message
he had received--the ceremony requiring his official presidency. Neither
of them replied. They breathed the morning air, they gave out long-drawn
sighs of relief, looking on the trees of the park.

A man came along the pavement, working slow legs hurriedly. Simeon ran
down to him.

'Humour, as much as you can,' Colney said to Mr. Barmby. 'Let him
imagine.'

'Miss Radnor?'

'Not to speak of her.'

'The daughter he so loves?'

Mr. Barmby's tender inquisitiveness was unanswered. Were they inducing
him to mollify a madman? But was it possible to associate the idea of
madness with Mr. Radnor?

Simeon ran back. 'Jarniman,' he remarked. 'It's over!'

'Now!' Colney's shoulders expressed the comment. 'Well, now, Mr. Barmby,
you can do the part desired. Come in. It's morning!' He stared at the
sky.

All except Dudley passed in.

Mr. Barmby wanted more advice, his dilemma being acute. It was
moderated, though not more than moderated, when he was informed of
the death of Mrs. Burman Radnor; an event that occurred, according to
Jarniman's report, forty-five minutes after Skepsey had a second time
called for information of it at the house in Regent's Park--five hours
and a half, as Colney made his calculation, after the death of Nataly.
He was urged by some spur of senseless irony to verify the calculation
and correct it in the minutes.

Dudley crossed the road. No sign of the awful interior was on any of the
windows of the house either to deepen awe or relieve. They were blank
as eyeballs of the mindless. He shivered. Death is our common cloak; but
Calamity individualizes, to set the unwounded speculating whether indeed
a stricken man, who has become the cause of woeful trouble, may not be
pointing a moral. Pacing on the Park side of the house, he saw Skepsey
drive up and leap out with a gentleman, Mr. Radnor's lawyer. Could it
be, that there was no Will written? Could a Will be executed now? The
moral was more forcibly suggested. Dudley beheld this Mr. Victor Radnor
successful up all the main steps, persuasive, popular, brightest of the
elect of Fortune, felled to the ground within an hour, he and all his
house! And if at once to pass beneath the ground, the blow would have
seemed merciful for him. Or if, instead of chattering a mixture of the
rational and the