Clearly, Doris must have help at this juncture.

“I see,” she thought on, heavily, “why fathers and mothers are none too many where children are concerned.”

It was then that she thought of David Martin in a strangely new way—­a way that brought a faint colour to her cheeks.

All the afternoon she thought of him while she, having set Mary to other tasks, devoted herself to Nancy and Joan.  She read to them, scampered through the house with them, did anything and everything they suggested, until she had subdued the nervous strain and could laugh a bit at her bugbears of the morning.  Joan, flushed and towzled, Nancy, sweetly radiant, effaced the menacing images her anxiety had created—­but she still needed help.  And David Martin was the one, the only one among her friends who seemed adequate to her need.

“I’ve tried to be a mother,” she thought, “but I have taken the father out of their lives—­I must supply it.”

When the children were in bed and the house quiet, Doris went to the sunken room and, taking up the telephone receiver, called her number.  She was calm and at peace.  She was prepared to lay the whole matter of the past few years before David Martin, and she was conscious, already, of relief.

“I am going to let myself—­go!” she thought, her ear waiting for a reply.

It was Martin who answered.

“David, are you quite free for an hour?”

“For the entire evening, Doris.  Are the children sick?”

How like Martin that was!  What most concerned and interested Doris was first in his thought.

Doris’s face twitched.

“It’s my friend,” she said, slowly, “that I want.  Not my physician.”

“I’ll be there in a half hour.”

The soft drip of the rain outside was soothing.  So happy did Doris feel that she wondered if her fears would not strike Martin as absurd, and after all, why should she lay her burden of confession upon him in order to ease her perplexity?  Along this line she argued with herself while she ordered a tray to be sent up as soon as Doctor Martin arrived.

She gave particular instructions as to the preparation of the dainties Martin enjoyed but which no one but Doris ever set before him.

“I chose the shield of silence,” she mused.  “Why should I ask another to help me with it now?”

Still, in the end, her honest soul knew that it was not help for herself she was seeking, but guidance for the children whose best interests she must serve.

And then, as one looks back over the path he has travelled while he pauses before going on, Doris Fletcher saw how the love of David Martin had been transformed for her sake into friendship that it might brighten her way.  She had never been able to give him what he desired, but so precious was she to him—­and full well she knew it—­that he had become her friend.

Out of such stuff one of two things is evolved—­a resentful man, or the most sacred thing, that can enter a woman’s life, a true friend.