Now, Mr. Derdon thought, there was no use staying in that room any longer. There was nothing to be found there. He opened the door and went out into the hall and he left the door open behind him. His sister and the woman who cleaned could go in there now and do what they liked in the way of tidying up and sorting out her clothes and the rest of it. He didn’t care what they did. He went into the kitchen and looked around, and then he left the kitchen and stood in the hall a minute, and then he went into the sitting room and sat down in his chair by the fire. He was too tired to read, and too tired to think, but he could not stop himself thinking. It was all a mystery, where their life together had gone, or why they had come together in the first place. He remembered the night he asked her to marry him. They were standing together on a small stone bridge that overlooked a river outside the town where she lived. He had not intended to ask her that night — he had meant to keep her wondering a little longer, not to let her get too sure of herself — but all of a sudden he turned to her and said, “I thought we might get married.” She continued looking down into the flowing water and she did not answer him. He said, “I was wondering if you had thought of me at all.” Still she said nothing and had not raised her head. Then he said, “Rose, please, for God’s sake, will you marry me?” And she raised her head and looked at him — her eyes were still clear in those days — and she said, “Yes,” and that was all she said. “Yes,” she had said, in a voice that was definite and that at the same time seemed to have been forced out of her, as though she had wanted to say yes, and expected to say yes, but at the same time would have liked to put off saying yes for just a little while longer, just a little while. Her face, turned up to him that night, had been the face of one who finds herself fallen into the middle of a deep lake, and who does not know how to swim, but would rather hope for help than scream for it. “It was careless of me to fall into this deep water,” her face seemed to say, “and I am all to blame for not having learned to swim, but even though I was stupid, not learning to swim, and even though the water is deep, I do not want to drown.” And he had put his arms around her and told her he would always take care of her. Sitting by the fire now, thinking of that night, he found he could see her face quite clearly, as she had looked then. He could see her face, and in her face all the promises that her face had shown him, the promises that had not been fulfilled. Her walk, her step, had been brave and free and definite, and it occurred to him now, as it had before, that he had fallen in love with her for the exact qualities that were not hers at all. It was not Rose’s fault that he had been mistaken in her. She had shone at a distance, but close to she had ceased to shine. Still, she was gone, she had been good, and he wished he could miss her.