ughout the passage; instinctively he knew
what was passing in Erica's mind. He spoke the only word of comfort
which he had to speak: a noble one, though just then very insufficient:

"There is work to be done."

Then came the dreary landing in the middle of the dark winter's night,
and presently they were again in a railway carriage, but this time
alone. Raeburn made her lie down, and himself fell asleep in the
opposite corner; he had been traveling uninterruptedly for twenty hours,
had received a shock which had tried him very greatly, now from sheer
exhaustion he slept. But Erica, to whom the grief was more new, could
not sleep. Every minute the pain of realization grew keener. Here she
was in England once more, this was the journey she had so often thought
of and planned. This was going home. Oh, the dreariness of the reality
when compared with those bright expectations. And yet it was neither
this thought nor the actual fact of her mother's death which first
brought the tears to her burning eyes.

Wearily shifting her position, she looked across to the other side of
the carriage, and saw, as if in a picture, her father. Raeburn was a
comparatively young man, very little over forty; but his anxieties and
the almost incredible amount of hard work of the past two years had told
upon him, and had turned his hair gray. There was something in his
stern set face, in the strong man's reserved grief, in the pose of his
grand-looking head, dignified, even in exhaustion, that was strangely
pathetic. Erica scarcely seemed to realize that he was her father.
It was more as if she were gazing at some scene on the stage, or on a
wonderfully graphic and heart-stirring picture. The pathos and sadness
of it took hold of her; she burst into a passion of tears, turned her
face from the light, and cried as if no power on earth could ever stop
her, her long-drawn sobs allowed to go unchecked since the noise of the
train made them inaudible. She was so little given to tears, as a rule,
that now they positively frightened her, nor could she understand how,
with a real and terrible grief for which she could not weep, the mere
pathetic sight should have brought down her tears like rain. But the
outburst brought relief with it, for it left her so exhausted that for
a brief half hour she slept, and awoke just before they reached London,
with such a frightful headache that the physical pain numbed the mental.

"How soon shall we be--" home sh