enough?" asked Mills.

"Why ask now?" she remonstrated. "The truth--the truth is that I never
asked myself. Enough or not there was no room for anything else. He was
the shadow and the light and the form and the voice. He would have it
so. The morning he died they came to call me at four o'clock. I ran
into his room bare-footed. He recognized me and whispered, 'You are
flawless.' I was very frightened. He seemed to think, and then said
very plainly, 'Such is my character. I am like that.' These were the
last words he spoke. I hardly noticed them then. I was thinking that he
was lying in a very uncomfortable position and I asked him if I should
lift him up a little higher on the pillows. You know I am very strong.
I could have done it. I had done it before. He raised his hand off the
blanket just enough to make a sign that he didn't want to be touched. It
was the last gesture he made. I hung over him and then--and then I
nearly ran out of the house just as I was, in my night-gown. I think if
I had been dressed I would have run out of the garden, into the
street--run away altogether. I had never seen death. I may say I had
never heard of it. I wanted to run from it."

She paused for a long, quiet breath. The harmonized sweetness and daring
of her face was made pathetic by her downcast eyes.

"_Fuir la mort_," she repeated, meditatively, in her mysterious voice.

Mills' big head had a little movement, nothing more. Her glance glided
for a moment towards me like a friendly recognition of my right to be
there, before she began again.

"My life might have been described as looking at mankind from a
fourth-floor window for years. When the end came it was like falling out
of a balcony into the street. It was as sudden as that. Once I remember
somebody was telling us in the Pavilion a tale about a girl who jumped
down from a fourth-floor window. . . For love, I believe," she
interjected very quickly, "and came to no harm. Her guardian angel must
have slipped his wings under her just in time. He must have. But as to
me, all I know is that I didn't break anything--not even my heart. Don't
be shocked, Mr. Mills. It's very likely that you don't understand."

"Very likely," Mills assented, unmoved. "But don't be too sure of that."

"Henry Allegre had the highest opinion of your intelligence," she said
unexpectedly and with evident seriousness. "But all this is only to tell
you that when he was