fight to come back," I arraigned myself with bitter scorn. "You have no
faith nor spiritual sources yourself, and you throw him back into
degradation when something is helping him crawl out. What's helping him?
No matter what it is, you are a coward to obstruct it."

And for a long hour I sat thus raging at myself and questioning
hopelessly, while the young moon rose higher and higher over the tops of
the silvery poplars and young spring slipped about in the lights and
shadows, invisible except for perfumed wreathings of gossamer mist.
Above, I heard father pacing up and down his rooms, slowly, almost
feebly. Sometimes he would hesitate; then I would hear him stop beside
the window, where I knew the ice bowl and the decanter were placed upon
a table which had stood beside the head of his bed so burdened since my
early childhood. I had always dreaded his moroseness and instinctively
felt the cause of it. I had never really loved him until just the last
few days, and now I felt my love rise in a tide that threatened to
overwhelm me.

"Oh, I found him, and now I've thrown him away," I sobbed to myself.
Then, as I sat listening, I heard the faltering steps come out into the
hall above, descend the steps one by one, go through the dark dining
room groping pitifully, and down the side steps out into the beloved
garden. Silently I watched the tall figure with the white hair silvered
radiantly by the moonlight go slowly down the path, past the old
graybeard poplars, and even up to the lilac hedge that ran as a bulwark
in front of the dark chapel door, which I could see was ajar as it
always is.

"He's going for help," I muttered to myself, and I felt the padding of
fear pursuing me, while also something of the Methodist grandmother