om him. People acknowledged
their heavy debt; paid as stoutly as they could. On the stairs there he
saw, coming, the daughter of the man whose negligence had taken to-day a
young life not easily to be spared.

"They're both friends of mine," added Mr. Dayne, gently. "Perhaps you
will excuse me a moment?"

And he stepped out into the hall, shutting the door quietly behind him.

* * * * *

So Mr. Dayne thought. But under the heavy veil she wore, this was less a
daughter than a woman: Cally, who had loved for a day and in the evening
heard that her love was dead.

The thought behind the venture had been Chas's. Nothing required him at
the House of Heth; he was for getting his sister and going to see what
help the Dabney House might need. And at the last minute, she had put on
her hat again, and gone too. Nothing that Mr. Dayne had felt about the
loneliness of this end could touch what Cally had felt. Of whom, too,
was help more required than of her, now or never any more? So they had
driven three from Saltman's to the old hotel, where she had thought to
come to a meeting to-day. And then Henrietta, who had come out from her
typewriter strong and white as ice, methodically sticking in hatpins as
she crossed the sidewalk; Hen, the iron-hearted, had quite suddenly
broken down; laying her cold face in Cally's lap, weeping wildly that
she would not bear it....

So Cally must brave the stairs without her, must speak to who might be
here. But she did not mind. Strength had come to her with the
consciousness that had returned all too quickly: the dead strength of
the inanimate. She was dark and cold within as the spaces between the
worlds....

And now the two cousins met Mr. Dayne in this strange endless corridor;
and knew that no services were asked of them.

They greeted with little speech. Mr. Dayne told of the simple
dispositions they were making. Chas explained how Mr. Heth had tried to
communicate with Mrs. Mason,--whom Mr. Dayne had quite overlooked, it
seemed,--but found that she was out of town; had telegraphed; how he
would have come down with them now, but had had to stop for the setting
of his arm. Uncle Thornton would come this evening....

"Ah, that's kind of him," said Mr. Dayne. "He must be in much pain...."

Then silence fell. There seemed nothing to say or do. How think that she
could serve--mitigate these numb horrors of pain and self-reproach?
All was over.

"Where i