wn roses. Katherine sat down in Richard's low armchair
and gazed into the crimson heart of the fire. She made a valiant effort
to put away haunting fears, to resume her accustomed attitude of
stoicism, of tranquil, if slightly defiant, courage. But Care, the
leopard, refused to be driven away. Surely, stealthily he had followed
her out of her bedchamber and now crouched at her side, making his
presence felt so that all illusion of comfort speedily fled. She knew
that she was alone, consciously and bitterly alone, waking in the midst
of the sleeping house. No footstep would echo up the stairs, hot to
find her. No voice would call her name, in anxiety for her well-being
or in desire. It seemed to Katherine that a desert lay outstretched
about her on every hand, while she sat desolate with Care for her sole
companion. She recognised that her existing isolation was, in a measure
at all events, the natural consequence of her own fortitude and
ability. She had ruled with so strong and discreet a hand that the
order she had established, the machinery she had set agoing, could now
keep going without her. Hence her loneliness. And that loneliness as
she sat by the dying fire, while the wind raved without, was dreadful
to her, peopled with phantoms she dared not look upon. For, not only
the accustomed burden of her motherhood was upon her, but that other
unaccustomed burden of admitted middle-age. And this other burden,
which it is appointed a woman shall bear while her heart often is still
all too sadly young, dragged her down. The conviction pressed home on
her that for her the splendid game was indeed over, and that, for very
pride's sake, she must voluntarily stand aside and submit to rank
herself with things grown obsolete, with fashions past and out of date.

Katherine rose to her feet, filled, for the moment, by an immense
compassion for her own womanhood, by an overmastering longing for
sympathy. She was so tired of the long struggle with sorrow, so tired
of her own attitude of sustained courage. And now, when surely a little
respite and repose might have been granted her, it seemed that a new
order of courage was demanded of her, a courage passive rather than
active, a courage of relinquishment and self-effacement. That was a
little too much. For all her valiant spirit, she shrank away. She grew
weak. She could not face it.

And so it happened that to-night--as once long ago, when poor Richard
suffered his hour of menta