Von Rosen sat listening.  He told himself that Sturtevant should be back within half an hour.  When only ten minutes had passed he took out his watch and was dismayed to find how short a time had elapsed.  He replaced his watch and leaned back.  He was always listening uneasily.  He had encountered illness and death and distress, but never anything quite like this.  He had always been able to give personal aid.  Now he felt barred out, and fiercely helpless.

He sat ten minutes longer.  Then he arose.  He could reach the kitchen by another way which did not lead past the stairs.  He went out there, treading on tiptoe.  The cat had looked up, stretched, and lazily gotten upon his feet and followed him, tail waving like a pennant.  He brushed around Von Rosen out in the kitchen, and mewed a little, delicate, highbred mew.  The dog came leaping up the basement stairs, sat up and begged.  Von Rosen opened the ice box and found therein some steak.  He cut off large pieces and fed the cat and dog.  He also found milk and filled a saucer.

He stole back to the study.  He thought he had closed all the doors, but presently the cat entered, then sat down and began to lick himself with his little red rough tongue.  Von Rosen looked at his watch again.  The house shook a little, and he knew that the shaking was caused by Jane Riggs, walking upstairs.  He longed to go upstairs but knew that he could not, and again that rage of helplessness came over him.  He reflected upon human life, the agony of its beginning; the agony, in spite of bravery, in spite of denial of agony, the agony under the brightest of suns, of its endurance; the agony of its end; and his reflections were almost blasphemous.  His religion seemed to crumble beneath the standing-place of his soul.  A torture of doubt, a certainty of ignorance, in spite of the utmost efforts of faith, came over him.  The cat coiled himself again and sank into sleep.  Von Rosen gazed at him.  What if the accepted order of things were reversed, after all?  What if that beautiful little animal were on a higher plane than he?  Certainly the cat did not suffer, and certainly suffering and doubt degraded even the greatest.

He looked at his watch and saw that Sturtevant had been gone five minutes over the half hour.  He switched off the electric light, and stood in his window, which faced the street down which the doctor in his car must come.  He realised at once that this was more endurable.  He was doing what a woman would have done long before.  He was masculine, and had not the quick instinct to stand by the window and watch out, to ease impatience.  The road was like a broad silver band under the moon.  The lights in house windows gleamed through drawn shades, except in one house, where he could see quite distinctly a woman seated beside a lamp with a green shade, sewing, with regular motions of a red, silk-clad arm.  Von Rosen strained his eyes, and saw, as he thought, a dark bulk advancing far down the street.  He watched and watched, then noted that the dark bulk had not moved.  He wondered if the motor had broken down.  He thought of running out to see, and made a motion to go, then he saw swiftly-moving lights pass the dark bulk.  He thought they were the lights of the motor, but as they passed he saw it was a cab taking someone to the railroad station.  He knew then that the dark bulk was a clump of trees.