he felt, must linger. To handle it, look at it, into it, behind it, was like holding a mystic communion with her; it gave him an emotion that was infinitely sweet and bitter, a pain that was dissolved in joy.

The glass lay now, folded in its ivory case, on the chimney-shelf in front of him. That was its place; he always kept it on his chimney-shelf, so that he could see it whenever he glanced round the room. He leaned back in his chair and looked at it; for a long time his eyes remained fixed upon it. “If she had married me, she wouldn’t have died. My love, my care, would have healed her. She could not have died.” Monotonously, automatically, the phrase repeated itself over and over again in his mind, while his eyes remained fixed on the ivory case into which her looking-glass was folded. It was an effect of his fatigue, no doubt, that his eyes, once directed upon an object, were slow to leave it for another; that a phrase once pronounced in his thought had this tendency to repeat itself over and over again.

But at last he roused himself a little, and leaning forward, put his hand out and up, to take the glass from the shelf. He wished to hold it, to touch it and look into it. As he lifted it towards him it fell open, the mirror proper being fastened to a leather back, which was glued to the ivory, and formed a hinge. It fell open; and his grasp had been insecure; and the jerk as it opened was enough. It slipped from his fingers, and dropped with a crash upon the hearthstone.

The sound went through him like a physical pain. He sank back in his chair and closed his eyes. His heart was beating as after a mighty physical exertion. he knew vaguely that a calamity had befallen him; he could vaguely imagine the splinters of shattered glass at his feet. But his physical prostration was so great as to obliterate, to neutralise, emotion. He felt very cold. He felt very could. He felt that he was being hurried along with terrible speed through darkness and cold air. There was the continuous roar of rapid motion in his ears, a faint, dizzy bewildent in his head. He felt that he was trying to catch hold of thing to stop his progress, but his hands closed upon emptiness; that has, was trying to call out for help, but he could make no sound. On—on—on, he was being whirled through some immeasurable abyss of space.

“Ah, yes, he’s dead,” quite,” the doctor “He has been dead some hours. He must have passed away peacefully, sitting here in his chair.”

“Poor gentleman,” said the porter’s wife. “And a broken looking-glass beside him. Oh, it’s a sure sing, a broken looking-glass.”