“Well, perhaps it would be as well for us not to be here for a while,” murmured Judith.  There were deep dark rings under her eyes, as though she had slept badly for a long time.  “Perhaps it may be better later on.  I can take Lawrence back with me when I go to the hospital.  I want to keep him near me of course, dear little Lawrence.  My little boy!  He’ll be my life now.  He’ll be what I have to live for.”

Something in the quality of her quiet voice sent a chill to Sylvia’s heart.  “Why, Judy dear, after you are married of course you and Arnold can keep Lawrence with you.  That’ll be the best for him, a real home, with you.  Oh, Judy dear,” she laid down her trowel, fighting hard against a curious sickness which rose within her.  She tried to speak lightly.  “Oh, Judy dear, when are you going to be married?  Or don’t you want to speak about it now, for a while?  You never write long letters, I know—­but your late ones haven’t had any news in them!  You positively haven’t so much as mentioned Arnold’s name lately.”

As she spoke, she knew that she was voicing an uneasiness which had been an unacknowledged occupant of her mind for a long time.  But she looked confidently to see one of Judith’s concise, comprehensive statements make her dim apprehensions seem fantastic and far-fetched, as Judith always made any flight of the imagination appear.  But nothing which Sylvia’s imagination might have been able to conceive would have struck her such a blow as the fact which Judith now produced, in a dry, curt phrase:  “I’m not going to be married.”

Sylvia did not believe her ears.  She looked up wildly as Judith rose from the ground, and advanced upon her sister with a stern, white face.  Before she had finished speaking, she had said more than Sylvia had ever heard her say about a matter personal to her; but even so, her iron words were few.  “Sylvia, I want to tell you about it, of course.  I’ve got to.  But I won’t say a word, unless you can keep quiet, and not make a fuss.  I couldn’t stand that.  I’ve got all I can stand as it is.”

She stood by an apple-tree and now broke from it a small, leafy branch, which she held as she spoke.  There was something shocking in the contrast between the steady rigor of her voice and the fury of her fingers as they tore and stripped and shredded the leaves.  “Arnold is an incurable alcoholic,” she said; “Dr. Rivedal has pronounced him hopeless.  Dr. Charton and Dr. Pansard (they’re the best specialists in that line) have had him under observation and they say the same thing.  He’s had three dreadful attacks lately.  We ... none of their treatment does any good.  It’s been going on too long—­from the time he was first sent away to school, at fourteen, alone!  There was an inherited tendency, anyhow.  Nobody took it seriously, that and—­and the other things boys with too much money do.  Apparently everybody thought it was just the way boys are—­if anybody thought anything about it, except that it