her mind
were talking and her voice were already dead. The tide of life was
retreating from her body. I could almost see it visibly ebb away. The
failing waves made no sound upon the shore. Death is uncanny, like all
silent things.

Her maid wished her to stay entirely in bed, but she would get up,
muttering that she was well; and the doctor said it was useless to
hinder her. She had no specific disease. Only the years were taking
their last toll of her. So she was placed in her chair each day by the
fire, and sat there till evening, muttering with those dry lips. The
stiff folds of her silken skirts formed an angle, and there the cat
crouched hour after hour, a silent, white, waiting thing.

And the waves ebbed and ebbed away, and I waited too.

One afternoon, as I sat by my grandmother, the servant entered with
a letter for me just arrived by the post. I took it up. It was from
Willoughby, my school-friend. He said the term was over, that he had
left school, and his father had decided to send him out to America to
start in business in New York, instead of entering him at Oxford as he
had hoped. He bade me good-bye, and said he supposed we should not meet
again for years; "but," he added, "no doubt you won't care a straw, so
long as you get the confounded money you're after. You've taught me one
of the lessons of life, young Ronald--never to believe in friendship."

As I read the letter I set my teeth. All that was good in my nature
centred round Willoughby. He was a really fine fellow. I honestly and
truly loved him. His news gave me a bitter shock, and turned my heart to
iron and to fire. Perhaps I should never see him again; even if I did,
time would have changed him, seared him--my friend, in his wonderful
youth, with the morning in his eyes, would be no more. I hated myself in
that moment for having stayed; I hated still more her who had kept me.
For the moment I was carried out of myself. I crushed the letter up in
my burning hand. I turned fiercely round upon that yellow, enigmatic,
dying figure in the great chair. All the fury, locked within my heart
for so long, rose to the surface, and drove self-interest away. I turned
upon my grandmother with blazing eyes and trembling limbs. I opened my
mouth to utter a torrent of reproachful words, when--what was it?--what
slight change had stolen into the wrinkled, yellow face? I bent over
her. The eyes gazed at me, but so horribly! She sat so low in her chair;
she l