He did not doubt a word she said, and when the letter was finished he put it passively in Andy's hand, and then, with a bitter groan, laid his throbbing head upon the cushion of the lounge where he was sitting.

There were no tears in his eyes--nothing but blood-red circles floating before them; while the aching balls seemed starting from their sockets with the pressure of pain.

He had had his chance with Ethie and lost it; and though, as yet, he saw but dimly where he had been to blame, where he had made a mistake, he endured for the time all he was capable of enduring, and if revenge had been her object, Ethie had more than her desire.
Andy was stunned for a moment, and sat staring blankly at the motionless figure of his brother; then, as the terrible calamity began to impress itself fully upon him, intense pity for Richard became uppermost in his mind, and stooping over the crushed man, he laid his arm across his neck, and, tender as a sorrowing, loving mother, kissed and fondled the damp brown hair, and dropped great tears upon it, and murmured words of sympathy, incoherent at first, for the anguish choking his own utterance, but gradually gathering force and sound as his quivering lips kept trying to articulate: "Dick, poor old Dick, dear old Dick, don't keep so still and look so white and stony.

She'll come back again, Ethie will.

I feel it, I feel it, I know it, I shall pray for her every hour until she comes.