“Aren’t you rather young——?” he demanded, “and what have you to give her?”

“Love,” said Randy calmly, “a man’s respect for her goodness and worth—­for her innocence.  She’s a little saint in a shrine.”

“Is she?” Georgie-Porgie asked, and smiled to himself; “few women are that.”

After Randy had gone George Dalton walked the floor.  He knew innocence when he saw it, and he knew that Randy had told the truth.  Becky Bannister was as white as the doves that were flittering down to the garden pool to drink.  He had never cared particularly for innocence.  But he cared for Becky.  He knew now that he cared tremendously.  Randy had made him know it.  It had not seemed so bad to think of Becky as breaking her heart and waiting for a word from him.  It seemed very bad, indeed, when he thought of her as married to Randy.

He felt that, of course, she did not love Randy; that he, Georgie-Porgie, had all that she had to give——­ But woman-like, she had taken this way to get back at him.  He wondered if she had sent Randy.

Up and down the terrace he raged like a lion.  He wanted to show that cub—­oh, if he might show him——!

Randy had known that he would rage, and as he rode home he had the serene feeling that he had stuck a splinter in George’s flesh.

Oscar Waterman joined George on the terrace, but noticed nothing.  His mind was full of Flora.  “I am sorry young Paine went so soon.  I wanted to thank him.  Flora can’t eat the jelly, but it was good of them to send it.  She can’t eat anything.  She’s worse, George.  I don’t know how I am going to stand it.”

George was in no mood for condolence.  Yet he was not quite heartless.  “Look here,” he said, “you mustn’t give up.”

“George, if she dies,” Oscar said, wildly, “what do you think will happen to me?  I never planned for this.  I planned for a good time.  I thought maybe that when we were old—­one of us might go.  But it wouldn’t be fair to take her now—­and leave me.”

“I have given her—­everything——­” he went on.  “I—­I think I’ve been a good husband.  I have always loved her a lot, George, you know that.”

He was a plain little man, but at this moment he gained something of dignity.  And there was this to say for him, that what he felt for Flora was a deeper emotion than George had ever known.

“The doctor says the crisis comes to-night.  I am not going to bed.  I couldn’t sleep.  George—­I’ve been wondering if I oughtn’t to call in—­some kind of clergyman—­to see her.”

“People don’t, nowadays, do they?” George asked rather uncomfortably.

“Well, I don’t see why they shouldn’t.  There ought to be somebody to pray for Flora.”

There was, it developed upon inquiry, a little old rector who lived not far away.  George went for him in his big car.

The little man, praying beside Flora’s gorgeous bed, felt that this was the hundredth sheep who had wandered and was found.  The other ninety and nine were safely in the fold.  He had looked after the spiritual condition of the county for fifty years.  There had been much to discourage him, but in the main if they strayed they came back.