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 Her eyes grew great. "How old was he?"

"Just two."

"My Dick was two." We both were breathing hard. "Why did he die?"

"We never knew. He was the loveliest boy, but delicate from his birth. At the end he just faded away, with the merest cold."

"So did my Dick—a chill. We thought he would be up and about the next day, and he just—"

Her awful gesture of regret was suddenly paralyzed. She seemed to be fighting her way to a discovery.

"It's—it's as if," she stammered, "they each had half a life."

I felt the usual instinct to treat her as though she were ill, because it was evident that she was sustained by a mystic interpretation of life. But she had already taught me something, so I stood aside while she fell on her knees, and wondered why she did not look at the