door too.  He’d got into that way of thinking, sort of dotty on the subject anyhow.  He was terribly hard hit, you know.  I don’t deny either that Madrina did keep him strung on hot wire for several years.  I don’t suppose it occurred to her that there was any reason why she shouldn’t if he were fool enough.  I never could see that he wasn’t some to blame too.  All he had to do—­all they any of them ever had to do, was to get out and stay out.  Madrina’d never lift a finger to hinder.  Even Saunders, I guess, would have had to admit that Madrina always had plenty of dignity.  And as for me, great Scott! what could you expect a woman like Madrina to do with a boy like me!  She never liked me, for one thing; and then I always bored her almost more than she could stand.  But she never showed her impatience, never once.  She’s really awfully good-natured in her way.  She wanted to make me into a salon sort of person, somebody who’d talk at her teas—­converse, don’t you know.  You see me, don’t you!  It was hard on her.  If she’d had you, now—­I always thought you were the only person in the world she ever really cared for.  She does, you know.  All this year you’ve been with her, she’s seemed so different, more like a real woman.  Maybe she’s had her troubles too.  Maybe she’s been deathly lonely.  Don’t you go back on her too hard.  Madrina’s no vampire.  That’s just old Saunders’ addled wits.  She’s one of the nicest people in the world to live with, if you don’t need her for anything.  And she really does care a lot for you, Sylvia.  That time out in Chicago, when we were all kids, when I wanted to go to live with your mother, I remember that Madrina suggested to her (and Madrina would have done it in a minute, too)—­she suggested that they change off, she take you to bring up and I go out to live with your mother,” He stopped to look at the woman beside him.  “I don’t know about you, Sylvia, but I guess it would have made some difference in my life!”

Sylvia drew back, horrified that he was even in thought, even for a moment robbing her of her mother.  “Oh, what I would have been—­I can’t bear to think of what kind of woman I would have been without my mother!” The idea was terrible to her.  She shrank away from her aunt as never before in her life.  The reminiscence brought an idea, evidently as deeply moving, into Arnold’s mind.  The words burst from him, “I might now be married to Judith!” He put his hands over his eyes and cast himself down among the pine-needles.

Sylvia spoke quickly lest she lose courage.  “Arnold!  Arnold!  What are you going to do with yourself now?  I’m so horribly anxious about you.  I haven’t dared speak before—­”

He turned over and lay on his back, staring up into the dark green of the pine.  “I’m going to drink myself to death as soon as I can,” he said very quietly.  “The doctors say it won’t take long.”

She looked at his wasted face and gave a shocked, pitying exclamation, thinking that it would be illness and not drink which was to come to his rescue soon.