Utter silence answered him.  He looked into a black wall of night.  It was not snowing, but the clouds were low and thick, and no stars were visible.  He called again in a shout, “Hullo there!  Who is it?” and obtained no response.  Then he closed the door, fastened it, and returned to the living-room.  “I guess you were right,” he said to Clemency.

“Yes, I think so,” said Clemency.  She spoke to Emma.  “Jack acted so because of something I said to Doctor Elliot,” she added.  “He thought something was wrong.  He is very intelligent.”  The dog was again lying at her feet.

But Emma shook her head obstinately.  She was the middle-aged daughter of a New Jersey farmer, and had lived with the family ever since they had resided in Alton.  She had a harsh face, although rather good-looking, “I have been used to dogs all my life,” said she, “and I never knowed a dog to act like that unless there was somebody about the house.”

“Well, I have done all I could,” said James.  “I called out the office door, and nobody answered.  It could not have been a patient.”

“There was somebody about the house,” repeated Emma.  “Well, I must go and mix up the bread.”

When she was gone, Clemency looked palely at James.  “Oh,” she said, “do you think it could have been that man?”

“No,” replied James firmly; “it must have been your gesture.  That is a very intelligent dog, and dogs have imagination.  He imagined something wrong.”

“I hope it was that,” said Clemency faintly.  “It seems to me I should die if I thought that terrible man were hanging about the house.  It is bad enough never to be able to go out of doors.”

“Doctor Gordon says I may take you out driving some evening,” said James consolingly.

Clemency looked at him with a brightening face.  “Did he?”

“Yes.”

Then to James’s utter surprise Clemency broke down, and began to cry.  “Oh,” she wailed, “I don’t know as I want to go.  I am afraid all the time.  If we were out driving, and he came up to the horse’s head, what could we do?”

“He would get a cut across the face that he would remember,” James returned fiercely.

“But he would see me.”

“It would be dark.”

“He might have a lantern.”

“You can wear a thick veil.”

Clemency sobbed harder than ever.  “Oh, no,” she wailed, “I don’t want to go so, in the dark, with a thick veil over my face, thinking every minute he may come.  Oh, no, I don’t want to go.”

“You poor little soul,” said James, and there was something in his voice which he himself had never heard before.  Clemency glanced up at him quickly, and he saw as plainly as if he had been looking in a glass himself in her blue eyes.  Instantly emotions of which he had dreamed, but never experienced, leaped up in his heart like flame.  He knew that he loved Clemency.  What he had felt for her mother had been passionless worship, giving all, and asking nothing.  This was love which asked as well as gave.  “Clemency,” he began, and his voice was hoarse with emotion.  She turned her head away, the tears were still on her cheeks, but they were very red, and her cheeks were dimpling involuntarily.