down, on the carpet."

"But that is tragedy, isn't it?"

He had had to acknowledge that it might be. But he had been quite
emphatic over the fact that most people didn't drop it.

After a long time he slept in his chair. The spring wind came in
through the opened window, and fluttered the leaves of the old
prayer-book on the stand.




XIII

The week that followed was an anxious one. David's physical
condition slowly improved. The slight thickness was gone from his
speech, and he sipped resignedly at the broths Lucy or the nurse
brought at regular intervals. Over the entire house there hung all
day the odor of stewing chicken or of beef tea in the making, and
above the doorbell was a white card which said: "Don't ring.
Walk in."

As it happened, no one in the old house had seen Maggie Donaldson's
confession in the newspaper. Lucy was saved that anxiety, at least.
Appearing, as it did, the morning after David's stroke, it came in
with the morning milk, lay about unnoticed, and passed out again,
to start a fire or line a pantry shelf. Harrison Miller, next door,
read it over his coffee. Walter Wheeler in the eight-thirty train