“I can’t come back, David.  They wouldn’t have me.”

After a silence he asked: 

“How much is known here?  What does Elizabeth know?”

“The town knows nothing.  She knows a part of it.  She cares a great deal, Dick.  It’s a tragedy for her.”

“Shall you tell her I have been here?”

“Not unless you intend to see her.”

But Dick shook his head.

“Even if other things were the same I haven’t a right to see her, until I’ve got a clean slate.”

“That’s sheer evasion,” David said, almost with irritation.

“Yes,” Dick acknowledged gravely.  “It is sheer evasion.”

“What about the police?” he inquired after a silence.  “I was registered at Norada.  I suppose they traced me?”

“Yes.  The house was watched for a while; I understand they’ve given it up now.”

In response to questions about his own condition David was almost querulous.  He was all right.  He would get well if they’d let him, and stop coddling him.  He would get up now, in spite of them.  He was good for one more fight before he died, and he intended to make it, in a court if necessary.

“They can’t prove it, Dick,” he said triumphantly.  “I’ve been over it every day for months.  There is no case.  There never was a case, for that matter.  They’re a lot of pin-headed fools, and we’ll show them up, boy.  We’ll show them up.”

But for all his excitement fatigue was telling on him.  Lucy tapped at the door and came in.

“You’d better have your supper before it spoils,” she said.  “And David needs a rest.  Doctor Reynolds is in the office.  I haven’t told him yet.”

The two men exchanged glances.

“Time for that later,” David said.  “I can’t keep him out of my office, but I can out of my family affairs for an hour or so.”

So it happened that Dick followed Lucy down the back stairs and ate his meal stealthily in the kitchen.

“I don’t like you to eat here,” she protested.

“I’ve eaten in worse places,” he said, smiling at her.  “And sometimes not at all.”  He was immediately sorry for that, for the tears came to her eyes.

He broke as gently as he could the news that he could not stay, but it was a great blow to her.  Her sagging chin quivered piteously, and it took all the cheerfulness he could summon and all the promises of return he could make to soften the shock.

“You haven’t even seen Elizabeth,” she said at last.

“That will have to wait until things are cleared up, Aunt Lucy.”

“Won’t you write her something then, Richard?  She looks like a ghost these days.”

Her eyes were on him, puzzled and wistful.  He met them gravely.

“I haven’t the right to see her, or to write to her.”

And the finality in his tone closed the discussion, that and something very close to despair in his face.