id of me, and she
threw herself out of the window. But she is not dead ..."

The word rang out in the silence, ruthlessly brutal in its significance.
Mr Hare looked up, his face a symbol of agony. "Oh, dead, how can you
speak so ..."

John felt his being sink and fade like a breath, and then, conscious of
nothing, he helped to lift Kitty from the tiles. But it was her father
who carried her upstairs. The blood flowed from the terrible wound in
the head. Dripped. The walls were stained. When she was laid upon the
bed, the pillow was crimson; and the maid-servant coming in, strove to
staunch the wound with towels. Kitty did not move.

Both men knew there was no hope. The maid-servant retired, and she did
not close the door, nor did she ask if the doctor should be sent for.
One man held the bed rail, looking at his dead daughter; the other sat
by the window. That one was John Norton. His brain was empty, everything
was far away. He saw things moving, moving, but they were all so far
away. He could not re-knit himself with the weft of life; the thread
that had made him part of it had been snapped, and he was left
struggling in space. He knew that Kitty had thrown herself out of the
window and was dead. The word shocked him a little, but there was no
sense of realisation to meet it. She had walked with him on the hills,
she had accompanied him as far as the burgh; she had waved her hand to
him before they walked quite out of each other's sight. They had been
speaking of Italy ... of Italy where they would have spent their
honeymoon. Now she was dead! There would be no honeymoon, no wife. How
unreal, how impossible it all did seem, and yet it was real, yes, real
enough. There she lay dead; here is her room, and there is her
book-case; there are the photographs of the Miss Austins, here is the
fuchsia with the pendent blossoms falling, and her canary is singing.
John glanced at the cage, and the song went to his brain, and he was
horrified, for there was no grief in his heart.

Had he not loved her? Yes, he was sure of that; then why was there no
burning grief nor any tears? He envied the hard-sobbing father's grief,
the father who, prostrate by the bedside, held his dead daughter's hand,
and showed a face wild with fear--a face on which was printed so deeply
the terror of the soul's emotion, that John felt a supernatural awe
creep upon him; felt that his presence was a sort of sacrilege. He crept
downstairs. He went into