id.

"That's right," said he.

And together helping each other, they filled the kettle and set it on
the fire to boil, moving in silence and with soft footsteps, as in the
house where death was. And together they sat down to the table and
forced themselves to eat a little, each for the sake of the other,
encouraging each other with such difficult, broken speech as mourners
use. They behaved in all ways as if the ghost of a dead Violet sat in
her old place, facing Ranny. The feeling, embraced by each of them with
the most profound sincerity, was that Ranny's bereavement was
irreparable, supreme. Each was convinced with an inassailable and
immutable conviction that the thing that had happened was, for each of
them, the worst that could happen.

Half through the meal he got up suddenly and left her. He was seized
with violent sickness, such sickness as he had never yet known, and
would have believed impossible. The sounds of his bodily anguish reached
her from the room above. They stirred her emotion to a passion of
helpless, agonizing pity. If she could only go up to him and put her
hand on his forehead, and do things for him! But she couldn't; and she
felt poignantly that if she did Ranny somehow wouldn't like it. So, as
there was nothing she could do for him, she laid her head down on her
arms and wept.

She raised it suddenly, like a guilty thing, and dashed the tears from
her eyes, as if she were angry with them for betraying her.

Ranny had recovered and was coming downstairs again. As he came in he
saw at once what she had been doing.

"You've been crying, Winny?"

She said nothing.

"I wouldn't if I were you," he said. "There's no need."

She rose and faced him bravely, for there were things that must be
thought of.

"What are you going to do, Ranny?" she said.

"Nothing. What is there to be done?"

"Well--" She paused, breathing painfully.

"Look here, Winny, you're dead-beat and you must go home to bed. Do you
know it's past ten?"

She drew herself up. "I'm not going."

"You must, dear, I'm afraid."

He smiled, and the smile and his white face made her heart ache. Also
they made her more determined.

"You must have somebody. You can't be left like this all by yourself. Do
you think I can go and leave you, when you're ill and all?"

"I'm all right now. I wish I could see you home, but I can't leave the
house with the kids, you see, all alone."

"Ranny," she said, "I'm not going." She was