The morning of Marie's funeral was sunny but bitterly cold; it was one of those days when autumn finally passes into winter, and the last memory of the summer warmth vanishes from the air.

It had been the saddest, dreariest laying to rest.

The widowed sister, of whom Marie had spoken in her last hours, had been unable to come, and the two men had gone through it all alone, helped only by the tearful, impulsive sympathy and the practical energy of the maid who had been with Marie ever since her marriage, and was as yet hardly capable of realising her mistress's death.
It was she who, while they were away, had done her best to throw a little air of comfort over the forsaken _salon_.

She had kindled the fire, watered the plants, and thrown open the windows to the sunshine, finding in her toil and movement some little relief from her own heart-ache and oppression.

When Paul came back, and with numb, trembling fingers had stripped himself of his scarf and his great-coat, he stepped over the threshold into the _salon_, and it seemed to him as though the sunlight and the open windows and the crackling blaze of the fire dealt him a sudden blow.