“If I could have five years, even one year, with you, I think I could bear to die; but not now, Pete.”

In the meantime Mr. Lanley, alone on the front seat, for he had left his chauffeur at home, was driving north along the Hudson and saying to himself: 

“Sixty-four.  Well, I may be able to knock out ten or twelve pretty satisfactory years.  On the other hand, might die to-morrow; hope I don’t, though.  As long as I can drive a car and everything goes well with Adelaide and this child, I’d be content to live my full time—­and a little bit more.  Not many men are healthier than I am.  Poor Vincent!  A good deal more to live for than I have, most people would say; but I don’t know that he enjoys it any more than I do.”  Turning his head a little, he shouted over his shoulder to Pete, “Sorry your mother couldn’t come.”

Mathilde made a hasty effort to withdraw her hands; but Wayne, more practical, understanding better the limits put upon a driver, held them tightly as he answered in a civil tone:  “Yes, she would have enjoyed this.”

“She must come some other time,” shouted Mr. Lanley, and reflected that it was not always necessary to bring the young people with you.

“You know, he could not possibly have turned enough to see,” Pete whispered reprovingly to Mathilde.

“I suppose not; and yet it seemed so queer to be talking to my grandfather with—­”

“You must try and adapt yourself to your environment,” he returned, and put his arm about her.

The cold of the last few days had given place to a thaw.  The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and yellow ones peered like eyes.

“Doesn’t it seem cruel to be so happy when Mama and poor Mr. Farron—­” Mathilde began.

“It’s the only lesson to learn,” he answered—­“to be happy while we are young and together.”

About ten o’clock Mr. Lanley left her at home, and she tiptoed up-stairs and hardly dared to draw breath as she undressed for fear she might wake her unhappy mother on the floor below her.

She had resolved to wake early, to breakfast with her mother, to ask to be allowed to accompany her to the hospital; but it was nine o’clock when she was awakened by her maid’s coming in with her breakfast and the announcement not only that Mrs. Farron had been gone for more than an hour, but that there had already been good news from the hospital.

“Il parait que monsieur est tres fort,” she said, with that absolute neutrality of accent that sounds in Anglo-Saxon ears almost like a complaint.

Adelaide had been in no need of companionship.  She was perfectly able to go through her day.  It seemed as if her soul, with a soul’s capacity for suffering, had suddenly withdrawn from her body, had retreated into some unknown fortress, and left in its place a hard, trivial, practical intelligence which tossed off plan after plan for the future detail of life.  As she drove from her house to the hospital she arranged how she would apportion the household in case of a prolonged illness, where she would put the nurses.  Nor was she less clear as to what should be done in case of Vincent’s death.  The whole thing unrolled before her like a panorama.