Finally, at the beginning of the fifth week, in exhaustion of her own irresolution, Anne wrote and without rereading or waiting for morning counsel, went out and dropped the note in the letter box. And then began a period of waiting that made the weeks preceding seem full of calm certainty. Now Anne was so sharply conscious of two selves within her, that, at times, she could almost visibly see them both. One went to and from work, wrote letters, cared for her rooms, attended to Rogie, talked quietly with Mrs. Jeffries. The other did nothing, nothing at all, except wait. This self emerged to control at the postman's coming in the morning; when she opened the door in the evening and looked first to the hat-stand to see if there was a letter; and at night when she lay in bed trying to find a reason for Roger's silence. For Roger did not answer.
The days filled to a week, two, three.
When, a few days before Christmas, Anne came home one night to find Mrs. Jeffries crying in the kitchen, her first reaction was almost relief that something had happened that would call upon her for some quality besides the petrifying patience of waiting in which she felt her brain rapidly numbing to a living death.
"What is it? What has happened?"
In the comfort of companionship, Mrs. Jeffries looked up from the table where she had been sitting in the dark, her head buried in her arms.
"My sister's dead. Little Lucy——"
Anne knelt and put her arm about the heaving shoulders. The older woman clung in a renewed passion of sobs and Anne held her quietly until they eased. At last Mrs. Jeffries looked up.
"There are three children, the youngest only five and John doesn't know what to do."
"You'll have to go to them?"
"Yes—I must go. John and Lucy adored each other—they were like lovers always. Poor—John—he's so lost—he doesn't seem able to grasp it. He says——" She reached to the letter lying as she had dropped it two hours before.