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When the blank-eyed young man on the bed had swallowed it all passively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went back to her room and closing the door put the washstand against it. She did nothing theatrical. She went over to the window and stood looking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the dusk from green to grey, from grey to black. And over the transom came again and again monotonously the refrain:

I–love you o–own–ly,
I love–but–you.

Jane fell on her knees beside the bed and buried her wilful head in the hand-embroidered pillow, and said a little prayer because she had found out in time.

III

The full realisation of their predicament came with the dusk. The electric lights were shut off! Jane, crawling into bed tearfully at half after eight, turned the reading light switch over her head, but no flood of rosy radiance poured down on the hand-embroidered pillow with the pink bow.

Jane sat up and stared round her. Already the outline of her dresser was faint and shadowy. In half an hour black night would settle down and she had not even a candle or a box of matches. She crawled out, panicky, and began in the darkness to don her kimono and slippers. As she opened the door and stepped into the hall the convalescent typhoid heard her and set up his usual cry.

“Hey,” he called, “whoever that is come in and fix the lights. They’re broken. And I want some bread and milk. I can’t sleep on an empty stomach!”

Jane padded on past the room where love lay cold and dead, down the corridor with its alarming echoes. The house seemed very quiet. At a corner unexpectedly she collided with some one going hastily. The result was a crash and a deluge of hot water. Jane got a drop on her bare ankle, and as soon as she could breathe she screamed.

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” demanded the red-haired person angrily. “I’ve been an hour boiling that water, and now it has to be done over again!”

“It would do a lot of good to look!” retorted Jane. “But if you wish I’ll carry a bell!”

“The thing for you to do,” said the red-haired person severely, “is to go back to bed like a good girl and stay there until morning. The light is cut off.”

“Really!” said Jane. “I thought it had just gone out for a walk. I daresay I may have a box of matches at least?”

He fumbled in his pockets without success.

“Not a match, of course!” he said disgustedly. “Was any one ever in such an infernal mess? Can’t you get back to your room without matches?”

“I shan’t go back at all unless I have some sort of light,” maintained Jane. “I’m–horribly frightened!”

The break in her voice caught his attention and he put his hand out gently and took her arm.

“Now listen,” he said. “You’ve been brave and fine all day, and don’t stop it now. I–I’ve got all I can manage. Mary O’Shaughnessy is—-” He stopped. “I’m going to be very busy,” he said with half a groan. “I surely do wish you were forty for the next few hours. But you’ll go back and stay in your room, won’t you?”

He patted her arm, which Jane particularly hated generally. But Jane had altered considerably since morning.

“Then you cannot go to the telephone?”

“Not to-night.”

“And Higgins?”

“Higgins has gone,” he said. “He slipped off an hour ago. We’ll have to manage to-night somehow. Now will you be a good child?”

“I’ll go back,” she promised meekly. “I’m sorry I’m not forty.”

He turned her round and started her in the right direction with a little push. But she had gone only a step or two when she heard him coming after her quickly.

“Where are you?”

“Here,” quavered Jane, not quite sure of him or of herself perhaps.