which their existence rested, it entered into all their calculations,
it was the text of all her mother's little homilies. Henrietta must
always pay her debts, she must tell the truth, she must do nothing of
which she was ashamed, and so far Henrietta had succeeded in obeying
these commands.

When Reginald Mallett died in the shabby boarding-house kept by Mrs.
Banks, he left his family without a penny but with a feeling of
extraordinary peace. They were destitute, but they were no longer
overshadowed by the fear of disgrace, the misery of subterfuge, the
bewildering oscillations between pity for the man who could not have
what he wanted and shame for his ceaseless striving after pleasure,
his shifts to get it, his reproaches and complaints.

In the gloomy back bedroom on the third story of the boarding-house he
lay on a bed hung with dingy curtains, but in the dignity which was
one of his inheritances. Under the dark, close-cut moustache, his lips
seemed to smile faintly, perhaps in amusement at the folly of his
life, perhaps in surprise at finding himself so still; the narrow
beard of a foreign cut was slightly tilted towards the dirty ceiling,
his beautiful hands were folded as though in a mockery of prayer. He
was, as Mrs. Banks remarked when she was allowed to see him, a lovely
corpse. But to Henrietta and her mother, standing on either side of
the bed, guarding him now, as they had always tried to do, he had
subtly become the husband and father he should have been.

'We must remember him like this,' Mrs. Mallett said, raising her soft
blue eyes, and Henrietta saw that the small sharp lines which Reginald
Mallett had helped to carve in her face seemed to have disappeared. It
was extraordinary how placid her face became after his death, but as