loved them.  The stuffy trains, the jarring sleepers, the bare little hotel bedrooms, the bad food, the irregular hours, the loneliness, the hard work, the disappointments, the temptations.  Yes but the fascination of it, the dear friends she had made, the great human lesson of it all!  And all for Jock.  That Jock might have good schools, good clothes, good books, good surroundings, happy times.  Why, Jock had been the reason for it all!  She had swallowed insult because of Jock.  She had borne the drudgery because of Jock.  She had resisted temptation, smiled under hardship, worked, fought, saved, succeeded, all because of Jock.  And now this pivot about which her whole life had revolved was to be pulled up, wrenched away.

Over Emma McChesney, lying there in the dark, there swept one of those unreasoning night-fears.  The fear of living.  The fear of life.  A straining of the eyeballs in the dark.  The pounding of heart-beats.

She sat up in bed.  Her hands went to her face.  Her cheeks were burning and her eyes smarted.  She felt that she must see Jock.  At once.  Just to be near him.  To touch him.  To take him in her arms, with his head in the hollow of her breast, as she used to when he was a baby.  Why, he had been a baby only yesterday.  And now he was a man.  Big enough to stand alone, to live alone, to do without her.

Emma McChesney flung aside the covers and sprang out of bed.  She thrust her feet in slippers, groped for the kimono at the foot of the bed and tiptoed to the door.  She listened.  No sound from the other room.  She stole across the hall, stopped, listened, gained the door.  It was open an inch or more.  Just to be near him, to know that he lay there, sleeping!  She pushed the door very, very gently.  Then she stood in the doorway a moment, scarcely breathing, her head thrust forward, her whole body tense with listening.  She could not hear him breathe!  She caught her breath again in that unreasoning fear and took a quick step forward.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” said a voice.  Simultaneously the light flashed on.  Emma McChesney found herself blinking at a determined young man who was steadily pointing a short, chubby, businesslike looking steel affair in her direction.  Then the hand that held the steel dropped.

“What is this, anyway?” demanded Jock rather crossly.  “A George Cohan comedy?”

Emma McChesney leaned against the foot of the bed rather weakly.

“What did you think—­”

“What would you think if you heard some one come sneaking along the hall, stopping, listening, sneaking to your door, and then opening it, and listening again, and sneaking in?  What would you think it was?  How did I know you were going around making social calls at two o’clock in the morning!”

Suddenly Emma McChesney began to laugh.  She leaned over the footboard and laughed hysterically, her head in her arms.  Jock stared a moment in offended disapproval.  Then the humor of it caught him, and he buried his head in his pillow to stifle unseemly shrieks.  His legs kicked spasmodically beneath the bedclothes.