come to him than homage, and he would hold
them but a very small burden if she gave him, also, some share in what
she suffered and achieved. The depth of her own pride and love were not
more apparent to her than the sense that the dead asked neither flowers
nor regrets, but a share in the life which they had given her, the life
which they had lived.

Rodney found her a moment later sitting beneath her grandfather's
portrait. She laid her hand on the seat next her in a friendly way, and
said:

"Come and sit down, William. How glad I was you were here! I felt myself
getting ruder and ruder."

"You are not good at hiding your feelings," he returned dryly.

"Oh, don't scold me--I've had a horrid afternoon." She told him how
she had taken the flowers to Mrs. McCormick, and how South Kensington
impressed her as the preserve of officers' widows. She described how
the door had opened, and what gloomy avenues of busts and palm-trees and
umbrellas had been revealed to her. She spoke lightly, and succeeded in
putting him at his ease. Indeed, he rapidly became too much at his ease
to persist in a condition of cheerful neutrality. He felt his composure
slipping from him. Katharine made it seem so natural to ask her to help
him, or advise him, to say straight out what he had in his mind. The
letter from Cassandra was heavy in his pocket. There was also the letter
to Cassandra lying on the table in the next room. The atmosphere seemed
charged with Cassandra. But, unless Katharine began the subject of her
own accord, he could not even hint--he must ignore the whole affair; it
was the part of a gentleman to preserve a bearing that was, as far as
he could make it, the bearing of an undoubting lover. At intervals
he sighed deeply. He talked rather more quickly than usual about the
possibility that some of the operas of Mozart would be played in the
summer. He had received a notice, he said, and at once produced a
pocket-book stuffed with papers, and began shuffling them in search.
He held a thick envelope between his finger and thumb, as if the notice
from the opera company had become in some way inseparably attached to
it.

"A letter from Cassandra?" said Katharine, in the easiest voice in the
world, looking over his shoulder. "I've just written to ask her to come
here, only I forgot to post it."

He handed her the envelope in silence. She took it, extracted the
sheets, and read the letter through.

The reading seemed to Rodney