life or her death. The others—those who had known—stared in despair after her, not understanding what they knew.
She who lay there was his Jenny; she belonged to him alone.
Helge Gram had come to him; he had asked and told, wailed and begged:
"I don't understand anything. If you do, Heggen, I beg you to tell me. You know—will you not tell me what you know?"
He had not answered.
"There was another; she told me so. Who was it? Was it you?"
"No."
"Do you know who it was?"
"Yes, but I am not going to tell you. It is no good your asking, Gram."
"But I shall go mad if you don't explain."
"You have no right to know Jenny's secrets."
"But why did she do it? Was it because of me—of him—or of you?"
"No; she did it because of herself."
He had asked Gram to leave him and had not seen him since; he had left Rome. It was in the Borghese garden, two days after the funeral, that Gram had come across him sitting in the sunshine. He was so tired; he had had to see to everything—give satisfactory explanations at the inquest, arrange for the interment, and write to Mrs. Berner that her daughter had died suddenly from heart failure. And all the time he had a kind of satisfaction in the thought that nobody knew of his own sorrow, that the real cause of her death was known only by him and for ever hidden with him. The sorrow had sunk so deep into him that it would for ever be the inmost essence of his soul, and he would never speak of it to any living being.
It would govern his whole life—and be governed by it; the
