“I think this is good-bye, Nan,” he had written.  “But don’t grieve overmuch, my dear.  If you knew how long a road to travel it has seemed since Annabel went away, you would be glad for me.  Will you try to be?  Always remember that the road was brightened by many flowers along the wayside—­and one of those flowers has been our good friendship, yours and mine.  We’ve been comrades, Nan, which is a far better thing than most relatives achieve.  And if sometimes you feel sad and miss the old friendship—­as I know you will—­just remember that I’m only in the next room.  People are apt to make a great to-do about death.  But, after all, it’s merely stepping from one of God’s rooms into the next.

“I don’t want to talk much about money matters, but I must just say this—­that all I have will be yours, just as all my heart was yours.

“I hope life will be kind to you, my dear—­kinder than you hope or expect.”

There were many who would find the world the poorer for lack of the kindly, gallant spirit which had passed into “God’s next room,” but to Nan the old man’s death meant not only the loss of a beloved friend, but the withdrawal from her life of a strong, restraining influence which, unconsciously to herself, had withheld her from many a rash action into which her temperament would otherwise have hurried her.

It seemed a very climax of the perversity of fate that now, at the very moment when the pain and bitterness of things were threatening to submerge her, Death’s relentless fingers should snatch away the one man on earth who, with his wise insight and hoarded experience of life, might have found a way to bring peace and healing to her troubled soul.

She spent the rest of the day quietly in her room, and when she reappeared at dinner she was perfectly composed, although her eyes still bore traces of recent tears.  Against the black of the simple frock she wore, her face and throat showed pale and clear like some delicate piece of sculpture.

Penelope greeted her with kindly reproach.

“You hardly touched the lunch I sent up for you,” she said.

Nan, shook her head, smiling faintly.

“I’ve been saying good-bye to Uncle David,” she answered quietly.  “I didn’t want anything to eat.”

Kitty, who had remained at the flat, regarded her with some concern.  The girl had altered immensely since she had last seen her before going abroad.  Her face had worn rather fine and bore an indefinable look of strain.  Kitty sighed, then spoke briefly.

“Well, you’ll certainly eat some dinner,” she announced with firmness.  “And, Ralph, you’d better unearth a bottle of champagne from somewhere.  She wants something to pick her up a bit.”

Under Kitty’s kindly, lynx-eyed gaze Nan dared not refuse to eat and drink what was put before her, and she was surprised, when dinner was over, to find how much better she felt in consequence.  Prosaic though it may appear, the fact remains that the strain and anguish of parting, even from those we love best on earth, can be mitigated by such material things as food and drink.  Or is it that these only strengthen the body to sustain the tortured soul within it?