"You've seen Father?"

"Yes."

There was a long silence, till she said:

"Oh! my darling!"

"It's all right." The emotions in him were so, violent and so mixed that
he dared not move--resentment, despair, and yet a strange yearning for
the comfort of her hand on his forehead.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know."

There was another long silence, then she got up. She stood a moment,
very still, made a little movement with her hand, and said: "My darling
boy, my most darling boy, don't think of me--think of yourself," and,
passing round the foot of the bed, went back into her room.

Jon turned--curled into a sort of ball, as might a hedgehog--into the
corner made by the two walls.

He must have been twenty minutes there before a cry roused him. It came
from the terrace below. He got up, scared. Again came the cry: "Jon!"
His mother was calling! He ran out and down the stairs, through the
empty dining-room into the study. She was kneeling before the old
armchair, and his father was lying back quite white, his head on his
breast, one of his hands resting on an open book, with a pencil clutched
in it--more strangely still than anything he had ever seen. She looked
round wildly, and said:

"Oh! Jon--he's dead--he's dead!"

Jon flung himself down, and reaching over the arm of the chair, where
he had lately been sitting, put his lips to the forehead. Icy cold! How
could--how could Dad be dead, when only an hour ago--! His mother's arms
were round the knees; pressing her breast against them. "Why--why
wasn't I with him?" he heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering word
"Irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down himself. It was his
first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted from
him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to this! All
love and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement, light and
beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It made a
dreadful mark on him; all seemed suddenly little, futile, short. He
mastered himself at last, got up, and raised her.

"Mother! don't cry--Mother!"

Some hours later, when all was done that had to be, and his mother was
lying down, he saw his father alone, on the bed, covered with a white
sheet. He stood for a long time gazing at that face which had never
looked angry--always whimsical, and kind. "To be kind and keep your end
up--there's nothing else in it," he had once heard his father say.