"Then we burned the automobile," resumed Romeo. "We soaked it in kerosene, and put our suits into the back seat--our caps and goggles and everything. We took out all the pieces of iron and steel and gave 'em to the junk man, and then we repented in sackcloth and ashes."

"How so?" queried Madame, with a faint glimmer of amus.e.m.e.nt in her sad eyes.

"Juliet made suits out of potato sacks--very plain suits--and we put 'em on to repent in."

"We went and stood in the ashes," put in Juliet, "while they were so hot that they hurt our feet, and Romie raised his right hand and said 'I repent' and then I did the same."

"And after the ashes got cold, we sat down in 'em and rubbed 'em into the sackcloth and our hair and all over our faces and hands."

"All the time saying 'I repent! I repent!'" continued Juliet, soberly.

"And then we went into mourning," concluded Romeo.

Madame's heart throbbed with tender pity for the stricken twins, but she wisely said nothing.

"Can you think of anything more we could do, or any more sacrifices we could make?" inquired Juliet, ready to atone in full measure.

"Indeed I can't," Madame replied, truthfully. "I think you've done everything that could be expected of you."

"We wrote to the Colonel," said Romeo, "but he hasn't got it yet. We saw it on the library table. We want to pay all the bills."

"And give Allison as much money as we spent on the automobile and for the suits and everything, and pay for fixing up his car," interrupted Juliet.

"We want to do everything," Romeo said, with marked emphasis.

"Everything," echoed Juliet.

"That's very nice of you," answered Madame, kindly, "and we all appreciate it."

The stem young faces of the twins relaxed ever so little. It was a great relief to discover that they were not objects of scorn and loathing, for they had brooded over the accident until they had become morbid.

"Did you say that you had been living upon mush and milk ever since?"

asked Madame.

"Ever since," they answered, together.

"I'm sure that's long enough," she said. "I wouldn't do it any longer.

Won't you stay to dinner with us?"

With one accord the twins rose, impelled by a single impulse toward departure.

"We couldn't," said Romeo.

"We mustn't," explained Juliet. Then, with belated courtesy, she added: "Thank you, just the same."

They made their adieux awkwardly and went home, greatly eased in mind.

As they trudged along the dusty road, they occasionally sighed in relief, but said little until they reached their ancestral abode, dogless now save for the pups gambolling about the doorstep and Minerva watching them with maternal pride.

"She said we'd lived on mush and milk long enough," said Romeo, pensively.

"We might fry the mush," Juliet suggested.

"And have b.u.t.ter and maple syrup on it?"

"Maybe."

"And drink the milk, and have bread, too?"

"I guess so."

"And jam?"

"Not while we're in mourning," said Juliet, firmly. "We can have syrup on our bread."

"That's just as good."

"If you think so, you ought not to have it."

"We've got to feed ourselves, or we'll die," he objected vigorously, "and if we're dead, we won't be any good to him or to anybody else, and we can't ever repent any more."

"I'm not so sure about that." said Juliet, with sinister emphasis.

"Nothing will happen to us that we don't deserve," Romeo a.s.sured her, "so come on and let's have jam. If it makes us sick, it's wrong, and if it doesn't, it's all right."

The following day, they voluntarily returned to their mush and milk, for they had eaten too much jam, and, having been very ill in the night, considered it sufficient evidence that their penance was not yet over.

XVIII

"LESS THAN THE DUST"

The heat of August shimmered over the land, and still, to every inquiry at the door or telephone, the quiet young woman in blue and white said: "No change." Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free from pain.

Life, for him, had ebbed back to the point where the tide must either cease or turn. He knew neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness; only the great pause of soul and body, the sense of the ultimate goal.

One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for. Isabel came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon.

His father had gone on ahead. The delusion still persisted, but he spoke of it no more. Even the violin did not matter now. He remembered the endless hours he had spent at work, almost every day of his life for years, and to what end? In an instant, it had been rendered empty, purposeless, and vain--like life itself.

Occasionally a new man came to look at his hand; not from the city now, but from towns farther inland. The examinations were painful, of course, but he made no objections. After the man had gone, he could count the slow, distinct pulsations that marked the ebbing of the pain, but never troubled himself to ask either the doctor or the nurse what the new man had said about it. He no longer cared.

Aunt Francesca had not come--nor Rose. Perhaps they were dead, also. He asked the nurse one sultry afternoon if they were dead.

"No," she a.s.sured him; "n.o.body is dead."

He wondered, fretfully, why she should take the trouble to lie to him so persistently upon this one point. Then a cunning scheme came into his mind. It presented itself mechanically to him as a trap for the nurse.