Peyton shrugged his shoulders. "There again--how can we tell? Why, I don't
suppose the woman herself--I wish to heaven your father were here to
explain!"

She rose and crossed over to him, laying her hands on his shoulders with a
gesture almost maternal.

"Don't let us talk of it," she said. "You did all you could. Think what a
comfort you were to poor Arthur."

He let her hands lie where she had placed them, without response or
resistance.

"I tried--I tried hard to keep him straight!"

"We all know that--every one knows it. And we know how grateful he
was--what a difference it made to him in the end. It would have been
dreadful to think of his dying out there alone."

She drew him down on a sofa and seated herself by his side. A deep
lassitude was upon him, and the hand she had possessed herself of lay in
her hold inert.

"It was splendid of you to travel day and night as you did. And then that
dreadful week before he died! But for you he would have died alone among
strangers."

He sat silent, his head dropping forward, his eyes fixed. "Among
strangers," he repeated absently.