Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream.  He had told Edith, after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had decided that he was “a member of the family”; but he appeared to have relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy—­he was far enough detached from membership now.  These were turbulent days in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence—­he seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly aware that he was present.  He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them.  The happy dreamer wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again unawakened.  He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.

Sibyl was under Gurney’s care.  Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night, not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first days of Sibyl’s illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her frequently, and to install a muscular nurse.  And whether he would or no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.  Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator’s gizzard as of yore.

Sibyl was not delirious—­she was a thin little ego writhing and shrieking in pain.  Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting herself; her condition was only the adult’s terrible exaggeration of that of a child after a bad bruise—­there must be screaming and telling mother all about the hurt and how it happened.  Sibyl babbled herself hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine.  She went from the beginning to the end in a breath.  No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.

“You ought to let me die!” she wailed.  “It’s cruel not to let me die!  What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?  Just look at my life!  I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and look what that got me into!—­look where I am now!  He brought me to this town, and what did I have in my life but his family?  And they didn’t even know the right crowd!  If they had, it might have been something!  I had nothing—­nothing—­nothing in the world!  I wanted to have a good time—­and how could I?  Where’s any good time among these Sheridans?  They never even had wine on the table!  I thought I was marrying into a rich family where I’d meet attractive people I’d read about, and travel, and go to dances—­and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans!  I did the best I could; I did, indeed!  Oh, I did!  I just tried to live.  Every woman’s