ers, and shifting their contents
aimlessly from one to the other.

Then Agnes turned, and showed a shamed, nervous old face. "I don't know
what's got into me, Miss Marise, that I ain't no good to myself nor
anybody else. I'm afraid to go back into the kitchen alone." She
explained to Neale, "I never was in the house with a dead body before,
Mr. Crittenden, and I act like a baby about it, scared to let Mrs.
Crittenden out of my sight. If I'm alone for a minute, seems 'sthough
. . ." She glanced over her shoulder fearfully and ended lamely, "Seems
'sthough I don't know what might happen."

"I won't leave you alone, Agnes, till it is all over," said Marise, and
this time she kept contempt not only out of her voice, but out of her
heart. She was truly only very sorry for the old woman with her foolish
fears.

Agnes blinked and pressed her lips together, the water in her eyes.
"I'm awful glad to hear you say that!" she said fervently.

Marise closed her eyes for a moment. It had suddenly come to her that
this promise to Agnes meant that she could not see Neale alone till
after the funeral, tomorrow, when she went back into life again. And she
found that she immensely wanted to see him alone this very hour, now!
And Agnes would be there . . . !

She opened her eyes and saw Neale standing up, his cap in his hand,
looking at her, rough and brown and tall and tired and strong; so
familiar, every line and pose and color of him; as familiar and
unexciting, as much a part of her, as her own hand.

As their eyes met in the profound look of intimate interpenetration
which can pass only between a man and a woman who have been part of each
other, she felt herself putting to him clearly, piercingly, the question
which till then she had not known how to form, "_Neale, what do you want
me to do?_"

She must have said it aloud, and said it with an accent which carried
its prodigious import, for she saw him turn very white, saw his eyes
deepen, his chest lift in a great heave. He came towards her, evidently
not able to speak for a moment. Then he took her hands . . . the memory of
a thousand other times was in his touch . . .

He looked at her as though he could never turn his eyes away. The
corners of his mouth twitched and drew down.

He said, in a deep, trembling, solemn voice, "Marise, my darling, I want
you always to do what is best for _you_ to do."

He drew a deep, deep breath as though it had taken all his strength to
s