ious that some great explosion is about to take place beside
them. But there was no explosion, and they went on standing by
the chairs and the tables. Mrs. Thornbury no longer saw them, but,
penetrating through them as though they were without substance, she saw
the house, the people in the house, the room, the bed in the room, and
the figure of the dead lying still in the dark beneath the sheets.
She could almost see the dead. She could almost hear the voices of the
mourners.

"They expected it?" she asked at length.

Miss Allan could only shake her head.

"I know nothing," she replied, "except what Mrs. Flushing's maid told
me. She died early this morning."

The two women looked at each other with a quiet significant gaze, and
then, feeling oddly dazed, and seeking she did not know exactly what,
Mrs. Thornbury went slowly upstairs and walked quietly along the
passages, touching the wall with her fingers as if to guide herself.
Housemaids were passing briskly from room to room, but Mrs. Thornbury
avoided them; she hardly saw them; they seemed to her to be in another
world. She did not even look up directly when Evelyn stopped her. It
was evident that Evelyn had been lately in tears, and when she looked
at Mrs. Thornbury she began to cry again. Together they drew into the
hollow of a window, and stood there in silence. Broken words formed
themselves at last among Evelyn's sobs. "It was wicked," she sobbed, "it
was cruel--they were so happy."

Mrs. Thornbury patted her on the shoulder.

"It seems hard--very hard," she said. She paused and looked out over the
slope of the hill at the Ambroses' villa; the windows were blazing in
the sun, and she thought how the soul of the dead had passed from those
windows. Something had passed from the world. It seemed to her strangely
empty.

"And yet the older one grows," she continued, her eyes regaining more
than their usual brightness, "the more certain one becomes that there is
a reason. How could one go on if there were no reason?" she asked.

She asked the question of some one, but she did not ask it of Evelyn.
Evelyn's sobs were becoming quieter. "There must be a reason," she said.
"It can't only be an accident. For it was an accident--it need never
have happened."

Mrs. Thornbury sighed deeply.

"But we must not let ourselves think of that," she added, "and let us
hope that they don't either. Whatever they had done it might have been
the same. These terrible illnes