" She had meant to be kind, but it destroyed his last
chance for sleep that night. He would have slept little if she had
not said it, but since she had said it, he could not sleep at all.
For he knew that it was true--if it could be true--and that his
mother, if she still lived in spirit, would be weeping on the other
side of the wall of silence, weeping and seeking for some gate to let
her through so that she could come and "watch over him."
He felt that if there were such gates they were surely barred: they
were like those awful library doors downstairs, which had shut her in
to begin the suffering to which he had consigned her.
The room was still Isabel's. Nothing had been changed: even the
photographs of George, of the Major, and of "brother George" still
stood on her dressing-table, and in a drawer of her desk was an old
picture of Eugene and Lucy, taken together, which George had found,
but had slowly closed away again from sight, not touching it. To-
morrow everything would be gone; and he had heard there was not long
to wait before the house itself would be demolished.
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