He walked around the block that night, a stooped commonplace figure, the dog at his heels.  Now and then he spoke to him, for companionship.  At the corner he stopped and looked along the side street toward the Livingstone house.  And as he looked he sighed.  Jim and Nina, and now Elizabeth.  Jim and Nina were beyond his care now.  He could do no more.  But what could he do for Elizabeth?  That, too, wasn’t that beyond him?  He stood still, facing the tragedy of his helplessness, beset by vague apprehensions.  Then he went on doggedly, his hands clasped behind him, his head sunk on his breast.

He lay awake for a long time that night, wondering whether he and Dick had been quite fair to Elizabeth.  She should, he thought, have been told.  Then, if Dick’s apprehensions were justified, she would have had some preparation.  As it was—­ Suppose something turned up out there, something that would break her heart?

He had thought Margaret was sleeping, but after a time she moved and slipped her hand into his.  It comforted him.  That, too, was life.  Very soon now they would be alone together again, as in the early days before the children came.  All the years and the struggle, and then back where they started.  But still, thank God, hand in hand.

Ever since the night of Jim’s death Mrs. Sayre had been a constant visitor to the house.  She came in, solid, practical, and with an everyday manner neither forcedly cheerful nor too decorously mournful, which made her very welcome.  After the three first days, when she had practically lived at the house, there was no necessity for small pretensions with her.  She knew the china closet and the pantry, and the kitchen.  She had even penetrated to Mr. Wheeler’s shabby old den on the second floor, and had slept a part of the first night there on the leather couch with broken springs which he kept because it fitted his body.

She was a kindly woman, and she had ached with pity.  And, because of her usual detachment from the town and its affairs, the feeling that she was being of service gave her a little glow of content.  She liked the family, too, and particularly she liked Elizabeth.  But after she had seen Dick and Elizabeth together once or twice she felt that no plan she might make for Wallace could possibly succeed.  Lying on the old leather couch that first night, between her frequent excursions among the waking family, she had thought that out and abandoned it.

But, during the days that followed the funeral, she was increasingly anxious about Wallace.  She knew that rumors of the engagement had reached him, for he was restless and irritable.  He did not care to go out, but wandered about the house or until late at night sat smoking alone on the terrace, looking down at the town with sunken, unhappy eyes.  Once or twice in the evening he had taken his car and started out, and lying awake in her French bed she would hear him coming hours later.  In the mornings his eyes were suffused and his color bad, and she knew that he was drinking in order to get to sleep.