Without a word she put the lamp down on the table at the foot of the stairs, and looked at him standing there with the darkness of the night behind him. Instantly he was across the threshold and at her side. He gripped her wrist and shook it, his eyes burning into hers.

"You will tell me that he lied! I told him he lied. I didn't believe him for a second. I told him I would ask you."

"Please let go of my arm," she said, faintly. "I don't know what you are--talking about."

"Did he lie?"

"Who?" she stammered.

"My grandfather. He said your brother was not your brother. He said he was your lover. My G.o.d! Your lover! Did he lie?" He shook her arm, worrying it as a dog might, his nails cutting into her flesh; he snarled his question out between shut teeth. His fury swept words from her lips.

She stepped back with a spring of terror, trying to pull her wrist from his grasp; but he followed her, his dreadful young face close to hers. She put her other hand behind her, and clutched at the banister- rail of the stairs. She stared at him in a trance of fright. There was a long minute of silence.

Then Sam said slowly, as though he were reading it word by word, aloud, from the open page of her face, "He--did--not--lie." He dropped her wrist; flung it from him, even, and stood motionless. Again neither of them spoke. Then Sam drew a long breath. "So, _this_ is life," he said, in a curiously meditative way. "Well; I have had enough of it." He turned as he spoke, and went quietly out into the night.

Helena Richie sat down on the lowest step of the stairs. She breathed in gasps. Suddenly she looked at her arm on which were four deep red marks; in two places the skin was broken. Upon the fierce pangs of her mind, flayed and stabbed by the boy's words, this physical pain of which she had just become conscious, was like some soothing lotion.

She stroked her wrist tenderly, jealous of the lessening smart. She knew vaguely that she was really wincing lest the smart should cease and the other agony begin. She looked with blind eyes at the lamp, then got up and turned the wick down; it had been smoking slightly and a half-moon of black had settled on the chimney. "Sarah doesn't half look after the lamps," she said aloud, fretfully--and drew in her lips; the nail-marks stung. But the red was dying out of them. Yes; the other pain was coming back. She paled with fright of that pain which was coming; coming; had come. She covered her face with her hands....

"Who," demanded a sleepy voice, "was scolding?"

Helena looked around quickly; David, in his little cotton night- drawers, was standing at the head of the stairs.

"Who scolded? I heard 'em," he said, beginning to come down, one little bare foot at a time; his eyes blinked drowsily at the lamp.

Helena caught him in her arms, and sank down again on the step. But he struggled up out of her lap, and stood before her 'It's too hot," he said, "I heard 'em. And I came down. Was anybody scolding you?"

"Yes, David," she said in a smothered voice.

"Were you bad?" David asked with interest.

Helena dropped her forehead on to his little warm shoulder. She could feel his heart beating, and his breath on her neck.

"Your head's pretty heavy," said David patiently; "and hot."

At that she lifted herself up, and tried to smile; "Come, dear precious, come up-stairs. Never mind if people scold me. I--deserve it."

"Do you?" said David. "Why?"

He was wide awake by this time, and pleaded against bed. "Tell me why, on the porch; I don't mind sitting on your lap out there," he bribed her; "though you are pretty hot to sit on," he added, truthfully.

She could not resist him; to have him on her knee, his tousled head on her breast, was an inexpressible comfort,

"When I go travelling with Dr. Lavendar," David announced drowsily, "I am going to put my trousers into the tops of my boots, like George does. Does G.o.d drink out of that Dipper?"

Her doubtful murmur seemed to satisfy him; he shut his eyes, nuzzling his head into her breast, and as she leaned her cheek on his hair-- which he permitted because he was too sleepy to protest--the ache of sobs lessened in her throat. After a while, when he was sound asleep again, she carried him up-stairs and laid him in his bed, sitting beside him for a while lest he should awake. Then she went down to the porch and faced the situation....

Sometimes she got up and walked about; sometimes sat down, her elbows on her knees, her forehead in her hands, one foot tapping, tapping, tapping. Her first idea was flight: she must not wait for Lloyd; she must take David and go at once. By to-morrow, everybody would know.

She would write Lloyd that she would await him in Philadelphia. "I will go to a hotel" she told herself. Of course, it was possible that Sam would keep his knowledge to himself, as his grandfather had done, but it was not probable. And even if he did, his knowledge made the place absolutely unendurable to her; she could not bear it for a day-- for an hour! Yes; she must get off by tomorrow night; and--

Suddenly, into the midst of this horrible personal alarm, came, like an echo, Sam's last words. The memory of them was so clear that it was almost as if he uttered them aloud at her side: "Well; I have had enough of it." Enough of what? Of loving her? Ah, yes; he was cured now of all that. But was that what he meant? "So this is life.... I have had enough of it."

Helena Richie leaped to her feet. It seemed to her as if all her blood was flowing slowly back to her heart. There was no pain now in those nail-marks; there was no pain in her crushed humiliation. _"I have had enough of it."..._

Good G.o.d! She caught her skirts up in her hand and flew down the steps and out into the garden. At the gate, under the lacey roof of locust leaves, she stood motionless, straining her ears. All was still. How long ago was it that he had rushed away? More than an hour. Oh, no, no; he could not have meant--! But all the same, she must find him: "_I have had enough of it_." Under her breath she called his name.

Silence. She told herself distractedly that she was a fool, but a moment later she fled down the hill. She must find Dr. King; he would know what to do.

She was panting when she reached his gate, and after she had rung and was beating upon the door with the palm of her hand, she had to cling to the k.n.o.b for support.

"Oh come; oh, hurry! Hurry!" she said, listening to Mrs. King's deliberate step on the oilcloth of the hall.

"Where is Dr. King?" she gasped, as the door opened; "I want Dr.

King!"

Martha, in her astonishment at this white-faced creature with skirts draggled by the dew and dust of the gra.s.s-fringed road, started back, the flame of the lamp she carried flickering and jumping in the draught. "What is the matter? Is David--"

"Oh, where is Dr. King? Please--please! I want Dr. King--"

William by this time was in the hall, and when he saw her face he, too, said:

"David?"

"No. It's--May I speak to you a moment? In the office? I am alarmed about--something."

She brushed past Mrs. King, who was still gaping at the suddenness of this apparition from the night, and followed the doctor into the little room on the left of the pa.s.sage. Martha, deeply affronted, saw the door shut in her face.

As for Mrs. Richie, she stood panting in the darkness of the office:

"I am very much frightened. Sam Wright has just left me, and--"

William King, scratching a match under the table and fumbling with the lamp chimney, laughed. "Is that all? I thought somebody had hung himself."

"Oh, Dr. King," she cried, "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!"

He put out his friendly hand and led her to a chair. "Now, Mrs.

Richie," he said in his comforting voice, "sit down here, and get your breath. There's nothing the matter with that scalawag, I a.s.sure you.

Has he been making himself a nuisance? I'll kick him!"

At these commonplace words, the tension broke in a rush of hysterical tears, which, while it relieved her, maddened her because for a moment she was unable to speak. But she managed to say, brokenly, that the boy had said something which frightened her, for fear that he might--

"Kill himself?" said the doctor, cheerfully, "No indeed! The people who threaten to kill themselves, never do. Come, now, forget all about him." And William, smiling, drew one of her hands down from her eyes.

"Gracious! what a wrist! Did David scratch you?"

She pulled her hand away, and hid it in the folds of her skirt. "Oh, I do hope you are right; but Dr. King, he said something--and I was so frightened. Oh, if I could just know he had got home, all safe!"

"Well, it's easy to know that," said William. "Come, let us walk down to Mr. Wright's; I bet a hat we'll find the young gentleman eating a late supper with an excellent appet.i.te. Love doesn't kill, Mrs., Richie--at Sam's age."

She was silent.

William took his lantern out of a closet, and made a somewhat elaborate matter of lighting it, wiping off the oozing oil from the tank, and then shutting the frame with a cheerful snap. It would give her time to get hold of herself, he thought.