watched for the postman from his upper window,
and for Lucy's step on the stairs with the mail. His first glimpse
of her always told him the story. At the beginning he had insisted on
talking about Dick, but he saw that it hurt her, and of late they had
fallen into the habit of long silences.

The determination to live on until that return which he never ceased
to expect only carried him so far, however. He felt no incentive to
activity. There were times when he tried Lucy sorely, when she felt
that if he would only move about, go downstairs and attend to his office
practice, get out into the sun and air, he would grow stronger. But
there were times, too, when she felt that only the will to live was
carrying him on.

Nothing further had developed, so far as they knew. The search had been
abandoned. Lucy was no longer so sure as she had been that the house was
under surveillance, against Dick's possible return. Often she lay in
her bed and faced the conviction that Dick was dead. She had never
understood the talk that at first had gone on about her, when Bassett
and Harrison Miller, and once or twice the psycho-analyst David had
consulted in town, had got together in David's bedroom. The mind was the
mind, and Dick was Dick. This thing about habit, over which David pored
at night when he should have been sleeping, or brought her in to listen
to, with an air of triumphant vindication, meant nothing to her.

A man properly trained in right habits of thinking and of action could
not think wrong and go wrong, David argued. He even went further. He
said that love was a habit, and that love would bring Dick back to him.
That he could not forget them.

She believed that, of course, if he still lived. But hadn't Mr. Bassett,
who seemed so curiously mixed in the affair, been out again to Norada
without result? No, it was all over, and she felt that it would be a
comfort to know where he lay, and to bring him back to some well-loved
and tended grave.

Elizabeth came often to see them. She looked much the same as ever,
although she was very slender and her smile rather strained, and she
and David would have long talks together. She always felt rather like an
empty vessel when she went in, but David filled her with hope and sent
her away cheered and visibly brighter to her long waiting. She rather
avoided Lucy, for Lucy's fears lay in her face and were like a shadow
over her spirit. She came across her one day putting Dick's c