he tells me an operation would be useless. They say that one
sorrow blunts another. I do not find it so. My heart is almost
breaking. May I call upon you? To see _his_ father and mother
would be a comfort to me. But if it would be otherwise for you,
please say 'no.' I will try to understand.

"Yours in deepest sympathy,

"MARY O'MALLEY."

As I finished, Brian waked from his nap, so I was able to leave him and
run downstairs to send off the letter by hand.

When it had gone, I felt somewhat as I've felt when near a man to whom
an anaesthetic is being given. The fumes of ether have an odd effect on
me. They turn me into a "don't care" sort of person without conscience
and without fear. No wonder some nations give soldiers a dash of ether
in their drink, when they have to go "over the top!" I could go, and
feel no sense of danger, even though my reason knew that it existed.

So it was while I waited for the messenger from our mean little hotel
to come back from the magnificent Ritz. Would he suddenly dash my sinful
hopes by saying, "_Pas de reponse, Mademoiselle_"; or would he bring me
a letter from Father and Mother Beckett? If he brought such a letter,
would it invite me to call and be inspected, or would it suggest that I
kindly go to the devil?

I was tremendously keyed up; and yet--curiously I didn't care which of
these things happened. It was rather as if I were in a theatre, watching
an act of a play that might end in one of several ways, neither one of
which would really matter.

I read aloud to Brian. My voice sounded sweet and well modulated, I
thought; but quite like that of a stranger. I was reading some moving
details of a vast battle, which--ordinarily--would have stirred me to
the heart. But they made no impression on my brain. I forgot the words
as they left my lips. Dimly I wondered if there were a curse falling
upon me already: if I were doomed to lose all sense of grief or joy, as
the man in the old story lost his shadow when he sold it to Satan.

A long time passed. I stopped reading. Brian seemed inclined for the
first time since his misfortune to talk over ways and means, and how we
were to arrange our future. I shirked the discussion. Things would
adjust themselves, I said evasively. I had some vague plans. Perhaps
they would soon materialize. Even by to-morrow----

When I had got as far as that, tap, tap, came the long expected knock at
the door. I sprang up. Suddenly the e