Was this white nerveless form, from which mind and breath were gently ebbing away, all that fate had grudgingly left to them, for a few more agonised moments, of the brilliant, high-bred woman who had been but yesterday the centre of an almost European network of friendships and interests! Love, loss, death,--oh, how unalterable is this essential content of life, embroider it and adorn it as we may! Kendal had been startled by her words about Isabel Bretherton.

He had not heard of any illness; it could hardly be serious, for he vaguely remembered that in the newspapers he had tried to read on the journey his eye had caught the familiar advertisement of the _Calliope_.

It must have happened while he was in Surrey.

He vaguely speculated about it now and then as he sat watching through the afternoon.

But nothing seemed to matter very much to him--nothing but Marie and the slow on-coming of death.
At last when the wintry light was fading, when the lamps were being lit outside, and the bustle of the street seemed to penetrate in little intermittent waves of sound into the deep quiet of the room, Marie Raised herself and, with a fluttering sigh, withdrew her hand softly from her brother, and laid her arm round her husband's neck.