would have done"--"and he went to sleep--he was
perfectly worn out. I went downstairs to find Father. It was after
midnight. He was walking around the house into one room after another
and out on the porch and even out in the garden, as fast as he could
walk. He looked so--" She shuddered. "I went up to him and said,
'Father, Father, what are you doing?' He never stopped walking an
instant, but he said, as though I was a total stranger and we were in
a railway station or somewhere like that, 'I am looking for my wife. I
expect to come across her any moment, but I can't seem to remember
the exact place I was to meet her. She must be somewhere about, and
I suppose--' and then, Sylvia, before I could help it, he opened the
door to Mother's room quick--and the men were there, and the coffin--"
She stopped short, pressing her hand tightly over her mouth to stop
its quivering. Sylvia gazed at her in horrified silence.

After a pause, Judith went on: "He turned around and ran as fast as
he could up the stairs to his study and locked the door. He locked
me out--the night after Mother died. I called and called to him--he
didn't answer. I was afraid to call very loud for fear of waking
Lawrence. I've had to think of Lawrence too." She stopped again to
draw a long breath. She stopped and suddenly reached out imploring
hands to hold fast to Sylvia. "I'm so _glad_ you have come!" she
murmured.

This from Judith ran like a galvanic shock through Sylvia's
sorrow-sodden heart. She sat up, aroused as she had never been before
to a stern impulse to resist her emotion, to fight it down. She
clasped Judith's hand hard, and felt the tears dry in her eyes. Judith
went on: "If it hadn't been for Lawrence--he's sick as it is. I've
kept him in his room--twice when he's been asleep I've managed to get
Father to eat something and lie down--there seem to be times when he's
so worn out that he doesn't know what he's doing. But it comes back to
him. One night I had just persuaded him to lie down, when he sat up
again with that dreadful face and said very loud: 'Where is my wife?
Where is Barbara?' That was on the night after the funeral. And the
next day he came to me, out in the garden, and said,--he never seems
to know who I am: 'I don't mind the separation from my wife, you
understand--it's not that--I'm not a child, I can endure that--but I
_must_ know where she is. I _must_ know where she is!' He said it over
and over, until his voice got so