There was the listening hush of midnight in the house. No light burned in any of the rooms, but through the windows, where the blinds were up, a woe-begone struggling moon shone palely.

The big bedroom at the front of the house was empty, and the moonbeams lay quiet on the smooth white counterpane of the canopied bed. Even in so faint a light it was plain to see the room was unused; the chairs and sofa held no heaps of flung-off clothes, the dressing-table appointments were in the most precise order, the chill air lay over everything, unbroken by the regular fall and rise of human breath.

The mother had taken the visitors’ room to sleep in ever since the day two months ago when Death had walked whitely into that larger room and frozen with his strange breath the father of her youngest child.