She was still standing there when Jane’s medicine came from the druggist at the corner, and for a while she waited outside the door, fearing to lighten Charley’s punishment by her entrance.  The medicine had to be measured in drops, and she went into the dining-room, where the children were huddled together in an improvised bed, and diluted the mixture with water before she could persuade herself to go into her mother’s room.  Even then she hesitated until she remembered that the doctor had said Jane must take the first dose immediately.  Not by her, if she could help it, should the divine wrath of the furies be appeased.

But with the first touch of her hand on the knob, Charley’s flippant voice greeted her with, “Won’t you come in, Gabriella?” and swallowing her angry retort, she entered stiffly, with the glass held out straight before her.  Charley, on his knees beside the bed, with his arm under his wife’s pillow, stared up at his sister-in-law with the guilty look of a whipped terrier, while Jane, pallid, suffering, saintly, rested one thin blue-veined hand on his shoulder.  Her face was the colour of the sheet, her eyes were unnaturally large and surrounded by violet circles; and her hair, drenched with camphor, spread over the pillow like the hair of a drowned woman.  Never had she appeared so broken, so resigned, so ineffably spiritual; and Gabriella’s solitary comfort was the thought that Jane’s attack had conquered Charley as completely as it had conquered the rest of them.

“Gabriella, I’ve forgiven him,” said Jane, with fainting sweetness, “and he wants you and mother to do so.  He has promised to be good in the future.”

“Well, I shan’t forgive him for keeping me up all night,” answered Gabriella resentfully, and she felt that even if it killed Jane, she could not keep back her reply.  “I can’t answer for mother, but I haven’t forgiven him and I never shall.”  She felt her anger hardened to a rock inside of her, and it hurt her so that she put the glass hurriedly down on the table and ran out of the room.  As she closed the door behind her she heard Jane saying gently:  “Yes, I forgive you, Charley, but I can’t help feeling that you don’t love me as you ought to.”

An old cape of her mother’s was lying on a chair in the hall, and, throwing it over her shoulders, Gabriella went out on the porch and stood breathing quickly in the cold air, with her hand pressed on her bosom, which rose and fell as if she had been running.  She was not only furious, she was grossly affronted, though she had known from the beginning, she said to herself, exactly how it would end.  She had never trusted Jane—­no, not a minute; she had never really trusted her mother.  Something had told her that Jane had never meant in her heart to leave Charley, that she was only making a scene, after the immemorial habit of women, before going back to him.  And yet, though she had suspected this all along, she was as indignant as if she had