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 things which lay at the foundation of existence—the fact that they loved each other, that they were together now, and that nothing else was of any importance. They were, too, like people stunned by horror. They sat by the stove, Philip in silence, while Mary told him what she had seen. For a long time it did not even appear strange to him that she should be there in his room at two o'clock in the morning.

He heard her saying, "Who was the woman they killed?"

"I don't know. She looked Italian."

There was a long silence and at last it was Mary, the practical Mary, who spoke. "You must wonder why I came here, Philip . . . after . . . after not seeing you at all for all this time."

He looked at her slowly, as if half-asleep. "I don't know. I hadn't even thought of it, Mary . . . anything seems possible to-night, anything seems possible in this queer park." And then, stirring himself, he reached across the table and touched her hand. She did not draw it away, and the touch gave him the strangest sense of a fathomless intimacy which went back and back into their childhood, into the days when they had played together in the tree-house. She had belonged to him always, only he had been stupid never to have understood it. He could have spoken out once long ago. If only he, the real Philip, had been born a little sooner, they would both have been saved.

And then, suddenly, he knew why she had come, and he was frightened.

He said, "You heard about my father?"

She started a little, and said, "No."

"He came back to-night. It was awful, Mary. If