a dark, unpleasant evening, full of cold and sleet.

Wilkinson thrust his arms into an overcoat, jammed a cap down on his
forehead, and strode into the weather. He strode into Mrs. Norman's
drawing-room.

When Mrs. Norman saw that look on his face she knew that it was all
right. Her youth rose in her again to meet it.

"Forgive me," said Wilkinson. "I had to come."

"Why not?" she said.

"It's so late."

"Not too late for me."

He sat down, still with his air of determination, in the chair she
indicated. He waved away, with unconcealed impatience, the
trivialities she used to soften the violence of his invasion.

"I've come," he said, "because I've had something on my mind. It
strikes me that I've never really thanked you."

"Thanked me?"

"For your great kindness to my wife."

Mrs. Norman looked away.

"I shall always be grateful to you," said Wilkinson. "You were very
good to her."

"Oh, no, no," she moaned.

"I assure you," he insisted, "she felt it very much. I thought you
would like to know that."

"Oh, yes." Mrs. Norman's voice went very low with the sinking of her
heart.

"She used to say you did more for her--you and your sister, with her
beautiful music--than all the doctors. You found the thing that
eased her. I suppose _you_ knew how ill she was--all the time? I
mean before her last illness."

"I don't think," said she, "I did know."

His face, which had grown grave, brightened. "No? Well, you see, she
was so plucky. Nobody could have known; I didn't always realize it
myself."

Then he told her that for five years his wife had suffered from a
nervous malady that made her subject to strange excitements and
depressions.

"We fought it," he said, "together. Through it all, even on her
worst days, she was always the same to me."

He sank deeper into memory.

"Nobody knows what she was to me. She wasn't one much for society.
She went into it" (his manner implied that she had adorned it) "to
please me, because I thought it might do her good. It was one of the
things we tried."

Mrs. Norman stared at him. She stared through him and beyond him,
and saw a strange man. She listened to a strange voice that sounded
far off, from somewhere beyond forgetfulness.

"There were times," she heard him saying, "when we could not go out
or see anyone. All we wanted was to be alone together. We could sit,
she and I, a whole evening without saying a word. We each knew what
the other wanted to sa