pen. At
a sweep her eyes took in the unevenly typewritten words:

Brent died at half past two this afternoon.
GARVEY.

She gazed wonderingly at the servant, reread the cablegram.
The servant said: "Shall I take it to Mr. Palmer, ma'am?"

"No. That is all, thanks," replied she.

And she walked slowly across the room to the fire. She
shivered, adjusted one of the shoulder straps of her low-cut
pale green dress. She read the cablegram a third time, laid
it gently, thoughtfully, upon the mantel. "Brent died at half
past two this afternoon." Died. Yes, there was no mistaking
the meaning of those words. She knew that the message was
true. But she did not feel it. She was seeing Brent as he
had been when they said good-by. And it would take something
more than a mere message to make her feel that the Brent so
vividly alive, so redolent of life, of activity, of energy, of
plans and projects, the Brent of health and strength, had
ceased to be. "Brent died at half past two this afternoon."
Except in the great crises we all act with a certain
theatricalism, do the thing books and plays and the example of
others have taught us to do. But in the great crises we do as
we feel. Susan knew that Brent was dead. If he had meant
less to her, she would have shrieked or fainted or burst into
wild sobs. But not when he was her whole future. She _knew_
he was dead, but she did not _believe_ it. So she stood
staring at the flames, and wondering why, when she knew such
a frightful thing, she should remain calm. When she had heard
that he was injured, she had felt, now she did not feel at
all. Her body, her brain, went serenely on in their routine.
The part of her that was her very self--had it died, and not Brent?

She turned her back to the fire, gazed toward the opposite
wall. In a mirror there she saw the reflection of Palmer, at
table in the adjoining room. A servant was holding a dish at
his left and he was helping himself. She observed his every
motion, observed his fattened body, his round and large face,
the forming roll of fat at the back of his neck. All at once
she grew cold--cold as she had not been since the night she
and Etta Brashear walked the streets of Cincinnati. The ache
of this cold, like the cold of death, was an agony. She shook
from head to foot. She turned toward the mantel again, looked
at the cablegram. But she did not take i