ore was horrible. She felt only horror as mechanically she took
out the letter and dropped it into the box.

The heavy sound of its fall turned her shuddering heart to ice.

She had felt horror, she had been prepared for horror, but not for such
horror as this. It would all be like this now, she knew, until the end.
Let her hurry through it, then; let her escape quickly; and, at all
events, her own room, her familiar little room, with its fire, its
books, its quiet white bed, would be a refuge after this terrible, empty
street. She thought only of her room,--the thought blotting out what
would happen in it,--knowing only that she longed to be there, with a
longing like a wounded child's for its mother's arms. And yet she still
stood staring at the slit in the pillar-box.

"Miss Fraser," a voice said beside her.

It was a voice of carefully quiet greeting, guarded interrogation,
guarded expostulation.

She looked up, feeling something shatter in her, fearing that she was
going to faint. It was almost like the crash of death and like a
swooning into a new consciousness. She only dimly, through the swooning
sense of change, recognized the face that looked at her, smiling, but so
puzzled, so pained--so pained that she guessed that her own face must
show some strange terror.

She had seen the face, in the chintz-and-gilt drawing-room,--it had
seemed out of place there,--she had seen it often; but memory was
blurred. Had he not taken her down to dinner somewhere only the other
day? Yes; she knew him well; only she was dead, a ghost, and reality,
familiar reality, looked different.

"Mr. Haldicott," she said, putting out her hand. Her voice was
normal--she heard that; she felt that she could almost have smiled. Yet
something was fearfully shattered, some power in herself that had
directed her so resolutely till now. The cat had been disconcerting, but
the appearance of this man, whom she knew quite well, who might talk,
might question her, might walk back beside her, seemed fatally
disconcerting. For could she act? Could she still speak on normally? And
further delay, now that every link was broken, now that to all real
intents and purposes she was dead, was a torture too fearful to be
contemplated. Yet how evade it? She felt that her hand, which he still
held, held very tightly, was trembling.

"You are ill," he said.

She shook her head.

"No; not at all. I only came out for a little walk. And I must go back
to