tears rolled down Milly's face, and Reinhard looked away.
He said nothing, and for the first time Milly thought him hard and
unsympathetic. When the car drew up before his door, he helped her down
and silently led the way to the darkened room on the floor above, then
left her alone with her dead husband.

* * * * *

When a woman looks on the face of her dead comrade, it should not be
altogether sad. Something of the joy and the tenderness of their
intimacy should rise then to temper the sharpness of her grief. It was
not so with Milly. It was wholly horrible to plunge thus, as it were,
from the blinding light of the full summer day into the gloom of death.
Her husband's face seemed shrunken and pallid, but curiously youthful.
Into it had crept again something of that boyish confidence--the joyous
swagger of youth--which he had when they sat in the Chicago beer-garden.
It startled Milly, who had not recalled those days for a long time.
Underneath his mustache the upper lip was twisted as if in pain, and the
sunken eyes were mercifully closed. He had gone back to his youth, the
happy time of strength and hope when he had expected to be a painter....

Milly fell on her knees by his side and sobbed without restraint. Yet
her grief was less for him than for herself,--rather, perhaps, for them
both. Somehow they had missed the beautiful dream they had dreamed
together eight years before in the beer-garden. She realized bitterly
that their married life, which should have been so wonderful, had come
to the petty reality of these latter days. So she sobbed and sobbed, her
head buried on the pillow beside his still head--grieved for him, for
herself, for life. And the dead man lay there on the white bed, in the
dim light, with his closed eyes, that mirage of recovered youth haunting
his pale cheeks.

When she left him after a time, Reinhard met her in the hall. She was
not conscious of the swift, furtive glance he gave her, as if he would
discover in her that last intimacy with her husband. When he spoke, he
was very gentle with her. He was about to motor into the city to make
some arrangements and would not return until the morning, leaving to her
the silent house with her dead. She was conscious of all his kindness
and delicate forethought, and mumbled her thanks. He had already
notified Bragdon's older brother, who was coming from the Adirondacks
and would attend to all the necessary things f