Vetch was waiting at the door of the car, and when she stumbled over her train, she fell slightly against him.  “How exhausted you are,” he observed gently, “and what a rock you are to lean on!”

She looked at him with a smile.  “Those are the very words I’ve used about you.”

He laughed and reddened, and she saw the glow of pleasure kindle in his unclouded blue eyes.  “Even rocks crumble when we put too much weight on them,” he responded, “but since you have done so much for us, perhaps you may be able to convince Patty that nothing can make any difference between her and me.  Won’t you try to see that, daughter?”

“Oh, Father!” exclaimed Patty with a sob, “it makes all the difference in the world!”

“There it is,” said Vetch with anxious weariness.  “That is all I can get out of her.”

“She is so tired,” replied Corinna.  “Let her rest.”  Though her gaze was on the street, she saw still the dusk beyond the ailantus tree and the old woman, with the crooked back, pressing down the eyelids over those staring eyes.

They did not speak again through the short drive; and when they reached the house and entered the hall, Patty turned for the first time to Corinna.  “I can never tell you,” she began, “I can never tell you—­” Then, with a strangled sob, she broke away and ran to the staircase beyond the library.

“Let her rest,” said Corinna, as Vetch came with her on the porch.  “Leave her to herself.  She needs sleep, but she is very young—­and for youth there is no despair that does not pass.”

“You are as tired as she is,” he returned.

She nodded.  “I am going home to sleep, but the look of that child worries me.”

“I kept it from her for sixteen years,” he said slowly, “and she found out by an accident.”

“I never suspected, or I might have prevented it.”

“No, I trusted too much to chance.  I have always trusted to chance.”

“I think,” she said, “that you have trusted most to your good instincts.”

He smiled, and she saw that he was deeply touched.  “Well, I’m trusting to them now,” he responded.  “They have led me between two extremes, and it looks as if they had led me into a nest of hornets.  I’ve got them all against me, but it isn’t over yet, by Jove!  It is a long road that has no turning—­”

They had descended the steps together, and walking a little way beyond the drive, they stood in the bright green grass looking up at the clear gold of the sunrise.

“There is a meeting to-night,” she said.

“Of the strikers—­yes, I may win them.  I can generally win people if they let me talk—­but the trouble goes deeper than that.  It isn’t that I can’t carry them with me for an hour.  It is simply that I can’t make any of them see where we are going.  It is a question not of loyalty, but of understanding.  They can’t understand anything except what they want.”