"If ever there was a good little woman, Millie, and one that deserves
better than me, it's--"

"Don't!" she cried. "Don't--don't--don't!"

"I--"

"Go--quick--now!"

He hesitated, stood regarding her there in the chair, eyes squeezed closed
like Iphigenia praying for death when exiled in Tauris.

"Millie--I--"

"Go!" she cried, the wail clinging to her lips.

He felt round for his hat, his gaze obscured behind the shining glasses,
tiptoed out round the archipelago of too much furniture, groped for the
door-handle, turning it noiselessly, and stood for the instant looking back
at her bathed in the rosy light and seated upright like a sleeping Ariadne;
opened the door to a slit that closed silently after him.

She sat thus for three hours after, the wail still uppermost on the
silence.

At ten o'clock, with a gust that swayed the heavy drapes, her son burst in
upon the room, his stride kicking the door before he opened it. Six feet in
his gymnasium shoes, and with a ripple of muscle beneath the well-fitting,
well-advertised Campus Coat for College Men, he had emerged from the three