nd took the case. Paul rose and stood
beside him, mechanically spreading out his hands to the fire.

'To-morrow, as soon as you are gone, I shall go off to Italy. There are
some little places in the south near Naples that she was very fond of. I
shall stay about there for a while. As soon as I feel I can, I shall come
back to the Senate and my work. It is the only thing left me,--she was so
keen about it.' His voice sank into a whisper, and a long silence fell
upon them. Women in moments of sorrow have the outlet of tears and
caresses; men's great refuge is silence; but the silence may be charged
with sympathy and the comfort of a shared grief. It was so in this case.

The afternoon light was fading, and Kendal was about to rise and make
some necessary preparations for his journey, when Paul detained him,
looking up at him with sunken eyes which seemed to carry in them all the
history of the two nights just past. 'Will you ever ask her what Marie
wished?' The tone was the even and passionless tone of one who for the
moment feels none of the ordinary embarrassments of intercourse; Kendal
met it with the same directness.

'Some day I shall ask her, or at least I shall let her know; but it will
be no use.'

Paul shook his head, but whether in protest or agreement Kendal could
hardly tell. Then he went back to his task of sorting the letters, and
let the matter drop. It seemed as if he were scarcely capable of taking
an interest in it for its own sake, but simply as a wish, a charge of
Marie's.

Kendal parted from him in the evening with an aching heart, and was
haunted for hours by the memory of the desolate figure returning slowly
into the empty house, and by a sharp prevision of all the lonely nights
and the uncomforted morrows which lay before the stricken man.

But, as Paris receded farther and farther behind him, and the sea drew
nearer, and the shores of the country which held Isabel Bretherton, it
was but natural that even the grip upon him of this terrible and
startling calamity should relax a little, and that he should realise
himself as a man seeking the adored woman, his veins still beating with
the currents of youth, and the great unguessed future still before him.
He had left Marie in the grave, and his life would bear the scar of that
loss for ever. But Isabel Bretherton was still among the living, the
warm, the beautiful, and every mile brought him nearer to the electric
joy of her presence. He took a