“Once more, Elinor,” he said, “I ask you if you will let me take you back with me.  This is the last time.  I have come, after a good many years of bad feeling, to make my peace with you and to offer you a home.  Will you come?”

“No.”

Her courage almost failed her.  She lay back, her eyes closed and her face colorless.  The word itself was little more than a whisper.

Her father opened the door and went out.  She heard him going down the stairs, heard other footsteps that followed him, and listened in an agony of fear that Doyle would drop him in the hall below.  But nothing happened.  The outside door closed, and after a moment she opened her eyes.  Doyle was standing by the bed.

“So,” he said, “you intend to give me the pleasure of your society for some time, do you?”

She said nothing.  She was past any physical fear for herself.

“You liar!” he said softly.  “Do you think I don’t understand why you want to remain here?  You are cleverer than I thought you were, but you are not as clever as I am.  You’d have done better to have let him take you away.”

“You would have killed him first.”

“Perhaps I would.”  He lighted a cigarette.  “But it is a pleasant thought to play with, and I shall miss it when the thing is fait accompli.  I see Olga has left you without ice water.  Shall I bring you some?”

He was still smiling faintly when he brought up the pitcher, some time later, and placed it on the stand beside the bed.

CHAPTER XXXV

In the Boyd house things went on much as before, but with a new heaviness.  Ellen, watching keenly, knew why the little house was so cheerless and somber.  It had been Willy Cameron who had brought to it its gayer moments, Willy determinedly cheerful, slamming doors and whistling; Willy racing up the stairs with something hot for Mrs. Boyd’s tray; Willy at the table, making them forget the frugality of the meals with campaign anecdotes; Willy, lamenting the lack of a chance to fish, and subsequently eliciting a rare smile from Edith by being discovered angling in the kitchen sink with a piece of twine on the end of his umbrella.

Rather forced, some of it, but eminently good for all of them.  And then suddenly it ceased.  He made an effort, but there was no spontaneity in him.  He came in quietly, never whistled, and ate very little.  He began to look almost gaunt, too, and Edith, watching him with jealous, loving eyes, gave voice at last to the thought that was in her mind.

“I wish you’d go away,” she said, “and let us fight this thing out ourselves.  Dan would have to get something to do, then, for one thing.”

“But I don’t want to go away, Edith.”

“Then you’re a fool,” she observed, bitterly.  “You can’t help me any, and there’s no use hanging mother around your neck.”