o go to Anne; but
he was too deeply stupefied to wonder why she would not see him.

Later they met.

He knew by his first glance at her face that he must not speak to her of
the dead child. He could understand that. He was even glad of it. In this
she was like him, that deep feeling left her dumb. And yet, there was a
difference. It was that he could not speak, and she, he felt, would not.

There were things that had to be done. He did them all, sparing her as
much as possible. Once or twice she had to be consulted. She gave him a
fact, or an opinion, in a brief methodic manner that set him at a
distance from her sacred sorrow. She had betrayed more emotion in
speaking to Dr. Gardner.

But for these things they went through their first day in silence, like
people who respect each other's grief too profoundly for any speech.

In the evening they sat together in the drawing-room. There was nothing
more to do.

Then he spoke. He asked to see Peggy. His voice was so low that she did
not hear him.

"What did you say, Walter?"

He had to say it again. "Where is she? Can I see her?"

His voice was still low, and it was thick and uncertain, but this time
she understood.

"In Edie's room," she said. "Nanna has the key."

She did not go with him.

When he came back to her she was still cold and torpid. He could
understand that her grief had frozen her.

At night she parted from him without a word.

So the days went on.

Sometimes he would sit in the study by himself for a little while. His
racked nerves were soothed by solitude. Then he would think of the woman
upstairs in the drawing-room, sitting alone. And he would go to her. She
did not send him away. She did not leave him. She did nothing. She said
nothing.

He began to be afraid. It would do her good, he said to himself, if she
could cry. He wondered whether it was wise to leave her to her terrible
torpor; whether he ought to speak to her. But he could not.

Yet she was kind to him for all her coldness. Once, when his grief was
heaviest upon him, he thought she looked at him with anxiety, with pity.
She came to him once, where he sat downstairs, alone. But though she
came to him, she still kept him from her. And she would not go with him
into the room where Peggy lay.

Now and then he wondered if she knew. He was not certain. He put the
thought away from him. He was sure that for nearly three years she had
not known anything. She had not known anythi