“I won’t drink milk!  I won’t!  I won’t!” he shouted madly.  “An’ I’ll kill you, if you won’t let me have my lunch, you—­you—­you mizzer’ble two-cent Willie!”

As the day drew on, his white face grew flushed, her fevered one white, and both were haggard and lined from the struggle.  Then, at about three o’clock, Mr. Ronald telephoned up to say he wished Radcliffe to go for a drive with him.

Claire replied it was impossible.

“Why?” came back to her over the wire.

“Because he needs punishment, and I am going to see that he gets it.”

“And if I interfere?”

“I resign at once.  Even as it is—­”

“Do you think you are strong enough—­strong enough physically, to fight to the finish?”

“I am strong enough for anything.”

“I believe you.  But if you should find him one too many for you, I shall be close at hand, and at a word from you I will come to the rescue.”

“No fear of my needing help.  Good-by!”

She hung up the receiver with a click of finality.

Outside, the sky grew gray and threatening.  Inside, the evening shadows began to gather.  First they thickened in the corners of the room; then spread and spread until the whole place turned vague and dusky.

The first violence of his rage was spent, but Radcliffe, sullen and unconquered still, kept up the conflict in silent rebellion.  He had not drunk his milk, so neither had Claire hers.  The two glasses stood untouched upon her desk, where she had placed them at noon.  It was so still in the room Claire would have thought the boy had fallen asleep, worn out with his struggles, but for the quick, catching breaths that, like soundless sobs, escaped him every now and then.  It had been dark a long, long time when, suddenly, a shaft of light from a just lit window opposite, struck over across to them, reflecting into the shadow, and making visible Radcliffe’s little figure cowering back in the shelter of a huge leather armchair.  He looked so pitifully small and appealing, that Claire longed to gather him up in her arms, but she forebore and sat still and waited.

Then, at last, just as the clock of a nearby church most solemnly boomed forth eight reverberating strokes, a chastened little figure slid out of the great chair, and groped its way slowly, painfully along until it reached Claire’s side.

“I will—­be—­good!” Radcliffe whispered chokingly, so low she had to bend her head to hear.

Claire laid her arms about him and he clung to her neck, trembling.

CHAPTER XI

It was almost ten o’clock when Claire left the house.  She waited to see Radcliffe properly fed, and put to bed, before she went.  She covered him up, and tucked him in as, in all his life, he had never been covered up, and tucked in, before.  Then, dinnerless and faint, she slipped out into the bleak night.