He had paid them well for it, and was ready to set forth again with the dawn when his wife drove in.

“My dear,” he had said, courteously, as his little wife’s face peered out at him from the carriage, “you shouldn’t have come.”

Sobered for the moment, he had made a handsome figure, as he stood with uncovered head, his dark hair in a thick curl between his eyes.  The morning was warm and he carried his overcoat on his arm.  His patent leather shoes and the broadcloth of his evening clothes showed the dust and soil of his walk through the fields.  He had evidently dismissed his cab at the edge of the city and had come crosscountry.

His wife had reached out her little hand to him.  “I came because I was lonely.  The house seems so big when you are—­away—­”

It had wrung Bronson’s heart to see her smiling.  Yet she had always met the General with a smile and with the reminder of her need of him.  There had been never a complaint, never a rebuke—­at these moments.  When he was himself, she strove with him against his devils.  But to strive when he was not himself, would be to send him away from her.

Her hands were clasped tightly, and her voice shook as she talked on the way back to the husband who seemed so unworthy of the love she gave.

Yet she had not thought him unworthy.  “If I can only save him,” she had said so many times.  “Oh, Bronson, I mustn’t let him go down and down, with no one who loves him to hold him back.”

In the years that had followed, Bronson had seen her grow worn and weary, but never hopeless.  He had seen her hair grow gray, he had seen the light go out of her face so that she no longer smiled as she had smiled in the picture.

But she had never given up the fight.  Not even at the last moment.  “You will stay with him, Bronson, and help Derry.”

And now this other woman had come to undo all the work that his beloved mistress had done.  And there in the shadowed room she was weaving her spells.

Outside, snug against the deadly cold in his warm closed car, Derry waited alone for Bronson’s signal.

There was movement at last in the shadowed room.  The General spoke from the bed.  Hilda answered him, and rose.  She arranged a little tray with two glasses and a plate of biscuits.  Then she crossed the room towards the bookcase.

Bronson reached up his hand and touched the button which controlled the lights on the third floor.  He saw Hilda raise a startled head as the faint click reached her.  She listened for a moment, and he withdrew himself stealthily up and out of sight.  If she came into the hall she might see him on the stairs.  He had done what he could.  He would leave the rest to Derry.

“What’s the matter?” the General asked.

“I thought I heard a sound—­but there’s no one up.  This is our hour, isn’t it?”

She brought the bottle out from behind the books.  Then she came and stood by the side of the bed.