“Are you sure if you marry you must have a child?”

“Yes,” she answered huskily, “if I married you I’d want a child.  And that want in me would grow and grow until it made both of us wretched.  I’m that kind of a woman.  That’s why my work has succeeded so far—­because I’ve a passion for children!  They’re not my work, they’re my very life!” She bowed her head, her mouth set hard.  “But so are you,” she whispered.  “And since this is settled, Allan, what do you think?  Shall we try to go on—­working together side by side—­seeing each other every day as we have been doing all these months?  Rather hard on both of us, don’t you think?  I do, I feel that way,” she said.  Again her features quivered.  “The kind of feeling I have—­for you—­would make that rather—­difficult!”

His grip tightened on her hands.

“I won’t give you up,” he said.  “Later you will change your mind.”

He left the room and went out of the house.  Deborah sat rigid.  She trembled and the tears came.  She brushed them angrily away.  Struggling to control herself, presently she grew quieter.  Frowning, with her clear gray eyes intently staring before her, she did not see her father come into the doorway.  He stopped with a jerk at sight of her face.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.  She started.

“Nothing’s the matter!  How is Bruce?”

“I don’t know.  Who went out a few minutes ago?”

“Allan Baird,” she answered.

“Oh.  You explained to him, of course, about Lake—­”

“Yes, he understands,” she said.  “He won’t come here after this—­”

Roger looked at her sharply, wondering just what she meant.  He hesitated. 
No, he would wait.

“Good-night,” he said, and went upstairs.

CHAPTER XXXVI

On the morrow Bruce did not grow better.  If anything, the child grew worse.  But by the next morning the crisis had passed.  In the house the tension relaxed, and Roger suddenly felt so weak that he went to see his own physician.  They had a long and serious talk.  Later he went to his office, but he gave little heed to his work.  Sitting there at his desk, he stared through the window far out over the city.  A plan was forming in his mind.

At home that night, at dinner, he kept watching Deborah, who looked tired and pale and rather relaxed.  And as soon as she was out of the house he telephoned Allan to come at once.

“It’s something which can’t wait,” he urged.

“Very well, I’ll come right up.”

When Baird arrived a little later, Roger opened the door himself, and they went back into his study.

“Sit down,” he said.  “Smoke, Allan?”

“No, thanks.”  Baird looked doubly tall and lean, his face had a gaunt appearance; and as he sat down, his lithe supple right hand slowly closed on the arm of his chair.

“Now then,” began Roger, “there are two things we want to get clear on.  The first is about yourself and Deborah.  There has been trouble, hasn’t there?”