t been thinking about. As Lucia took the
telegram she was still looking at Rickman and the smile of amusement
was still on her face. Robert respectfully withdrew. Lucia opened the
envelope and Rickman looked down, apparently absorbed in Iamblichus.
He was now considering in what form of words he would tell her.

Then, without looking up, he knew that something had happened. His
first feeling was that it had happened to himself. He could not say
how or why or what was the precise moment of its happening; he only
knew that she had been talking to him, listening to him, smiling at
him, and that then something had swept him on one side and carried her
away, he did not know where, except that it was beyond his reach.

He looked up, startled by a sudden change in her breathing. She was
standing opposite him; she seemed to be keeping herself upright by her
hands pressed palms downwards on the table. The telegram was spread
open there before her; and she was not looking at it; she was looking
straight at him, but without seeing him. Her mouth was so tightly
closed that it might have been the pressure of her lips that drove
the blood from them; she breathed heavily through her nostrils, her
small thin breast heaving without a sob. In her face there was neither
sorrow nor terror, and he could see that there was no thought in her
brain, and that all the life in her body was gathered into her
swollen, labouring heart. And as he looked at her he was pierced with
a great pang of pity.

She stood there so, supporting herself by her hands for about a
minute. He was certain that no sense of his presence reached her
across the gulf of her unknown and immeasurable anguish.

At last she drew her hands from the table, first one, then the other,
slowly, as if she were dragging a weight; her body swayed, and he
sprang to his feet with an inarticulate murmur, and held out one arm
to steady her. At his touch her perishing will revived and her
faintness passed from her. She put him gently aside and went slowly
out of the room.

As he turned to the table the five words of her telegram stared him in
the face: "Your father died this morning."

It would have been horrible if he had told her.

His first thought was for her; and he thanked Heaven that had tied his
tongue. Then, try as he would to realize her suffering, it eluded him;
he could only feel that a moment ago she had been with him, standing
there and smiling, and that now he was alo