The door into Dick’s office was open, and on his once neat desk there lay a litter of papers and letters.  She sighed and went up the stairs.

David lay propped up in his walnut bed.  An incredibly wasted and old David; the hands on the log-cabin quilt which their mother had made were old hands, and tired.  Sometimes Lucy, with a frightened gasp, would fear that David’s waiting now was not all for Dick.  That he was waiting for peace.

There had been something new in David lately.  She thought it was fear.  Always he had been so sure of himself; he had made his experiment in a man’s soul, and whatever the result he had been ready to face his Creator with it.  But he had lost courage.  He had tampered with the things that were to be and not he, but Dick, was paying for that awful audacity.

Once, picking up his prayer-book to read evening prayer as was her custom now, it had opened at a verse marked with an uneven line: 

“I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”

That had frightened her

David’s eyes followed her about the room.

“I’ve got an idea you’re keeping something from me, Lucy.”

“I?  Why should I do that?”

“Then where’s Harrison?” he demanded, querulously.

She told him one of the few white lies of her life when she said:  “He hasn’t been well.  He’ll be over to-morrow.”  She sat down and picked up the prayer-book, only to find him lifting himself in the bed and listening.

“Somebody closed the hall door, Lucy.  If it’s Reynolds, I want to see him.”

She got up and went to the head of the stairs.  The light was low in the hall beneath, and she saw a man standing there.  But she still wore her reading glasses, and she saw at first hardly more than a figure.

“Is that you, Doctor Reynolds?” she asked, in her high old voice.

Then she put her hand to her throat and stood rigid, staring down.  For the man had whipped off his cap and stood with his arms wide, looking up.

Holding to the stair-rail, her knees trembling under her, Lucy went down, and not until Dick’s arms were around her was she sure that it was Dick, and not his shabby, weary ghost.  She clung to him, tears streaming down her face, still in that cautious silence which governed them both; she held him off and looked at him, and then strained herself to him again, as though the sense of unreality were too strong, and only the contact of his rough clothing made him real to her.

It was not until they were in her sitting-room with the door closed that either of them dared to speak.  Or perhaps, could speak.  Even then she kept hold of him.

“Dick!” she said.  “Dick!”

And that, over and over.

“How is he?” he was able to ask finally.