Soulsby nodded, and turned down the wick of his lamp a trifle.  “Yes, I know you did,” he remarked in placidly non-contentious tones.  “I can’t say I saw much in him myself, but I daresay you’re right.”  There followed a moment’s silence, during which he experimented in turning the wick up again.  “But, anyway,” he went on, “there isn’t anything you can do.  He’ll sleep it off, and the longer he’s left alone the better.  It isn’t as if we had a hired girl, who’d come down and find him there, and give the whole thing away.  He’s fixed up there perfectly comfortable; and when he’s had his sleep out, and wakes up on his own account, he’ll be feeling a heap better.”

The argument might have carried conviction, but on the instant the sound of footsteps came to them from the room below.  The subdued noise rose regularly, as of one pacing to and fro.

“No, Soulsby, you come back to bed, and get your sleep out.  I’m going downstairs.  It’s no good talking; I’m going.”

Brother Soulsby offered no further opposition, either by talk or demeanor, but returned contentedly to bed, pulling the comforter over his ears, and falling into the slow, measured respiration of tranquil slumber before his wife was ready to leave the room.

The dim, cold gray of twilight was sifting furtively through the lace curtains of the front windows when Mrs. Soulsby, lamp in hand, entered the parlor.  She confronted a figure she would have hardly recognized.  The man seemed to have been submerged in a bath of disgrace.  From the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, everything about him was altered, distorted, smeared with an intangible effect of shame.  In the vague gloom of the middle distance, between lamp and window, she noticed that his shoulders were crouched, like those of some shambling tramp.  The frowsy shadows of a stubble beard lay on his jaw and throat.  His clothes were crumpled and hung awry; his boots were stained with mud.  The silk hat on the piano told its battered story with dumb eloquence.

Lifting the lamp, she moved forward a step, and threw its light upon his face.  A little groan sounded involuntarily upon her lips.  Out of a mask of unpleasant features, swollen with drink and weighted by the physical craving for rest and sleep, there stared at her two bloodshot eyes, shining with the wild light of hysteria.  The effect of dishevelled hair, relaxed muscles, and rough, half-bearded lower face lent to these eyes, as she caught their first glance, an unnatural glare.  The lamp shook in her hand for an instant.  Then, ashamed of herself, she held out her other hand fearlessly to him.

“Tell me all about it, Theron,” she said calmly, and with a soothing, motherly intonation in her voice.

He did not take the hand she offered, but suddenly, with a wailing moan, cast himself on his knees at her feet.  He was so tall a man that the movement could have no grace.  He abased his head awkwardly, to bury it among the folds of the skirts at her ankles.  She stood still for a moment, looking down upon him.  Then, blowing out the light, she reached over and set the smoking lamp on the piano near by.  The daylight made things distinguishable in a wan, uncertain way, throughout the room.