She handed in the towels and sat down again on the stairs leaning her head against the wall.  What time could it be?  Was it still daylight? . . .  No, there was a lamp lighted down there.  What could she have been doing all day, she and Agnes and the doctor and Mr. Hadley?  She wondered if the children were all right, and if Neale would remember, when he washed Mark’s face, that there was a bruise on his temple where the swing-board had struck him.  Was that only yesterday morning!  Was it possible that it was only last night that she had lain awake in the darkness, trying to think, trying to know what she was feeling, burning with excitement, as one by one those boldly forward-thrusting movements came back to her from the time when he had cried out so angrily, “They can’t love her.  They’re not capable of it!” to the time when they had exchanged that long reckless gaze over Elly’s head!  And now there was the triumphant glory of security which had been in his kiss . . . why, that was this morning, only a few hours ago!  Even through her cold numbed lassitude she shrank again before the flare-up of that excitement, and burned in it.  She tried to put this behind her at once, to wait, like all the rest, till this truce should be over, and she should once more be back in that melee of agitation the thought of which turned her sick with confusion.  She was not strong enough for life, if this was what it brought, these fierce, clawing passions that did not wait for your bidding to go or come, but left you as though you were dead and then pounced on you like tigers.  She had not iron in her either to live ruthlessly, or to stamp out that upward leap of flame which meant the renewal of priceless youth and passion.  Between these alternatives, she could make no decision, she could not, it would tear her in pieces to do it.

The pendulum swung back again, and all this went out, leaving her mortally tired.  Agnes came to the foot of the stairs, a little, withered, stricken old figure, her apron at her eyes.  From behind it she murmured humbly, between swallowing hard, that she had made some tea and there was bread and butter ready, and should she boil an egg?

A good and healing pity came into Marise’s heart.  Poor old Agnes, it was the end of the world for her, of course.  And how touching, how tragic, how unjust, the fate of dependents, to turn from one source of commands to another.  She ran downstairs on tip-toe and put her arm around the old woman’s shoulder.  “I haven’t said anything yet, Agnes,” she told her, “because this has come on us so suddenly.  But of course Mr. Crittenden and I will always look out for you.  Cousin Hetty . . . you were her best friend.”

The old woman laid her head down on the other’s shoulder and wept aloud.  “I miss her so.  I miss her so,” she said over and over.

“The thing to do for her,” thought Marise, as she patted the thin heaving shoulders, “is to give her something to work at.”  Aloud she said, “Agnes, we must get the front room downstairs ready.  Mr. Hadley wants to have Cousin Hetty brought down there.  Before we eat we might as well get the larger pieces of furniture moved out.”