Helen had lain awake for hours in darkness, in a strange comatose state of terror and hallucination. There was no sound save the sound of Barton’s breathing beside her, but in her strange drugged state she would imagine she heard all kinds of sounds. As she lay there in the dark, her eyes wide open, wide awake, plucking at her large cleft chin abstractedly, in a kind of drugged hypnosis, thinking like a child:

“What is that? . . . Someone is coming! . . . That was a car that stopped outside. . . . Now they’re coming up the steps. . . . There’s someone knocking at the door. . . . Oh, my God! . . . It’s about Papa! . . . He’s had another attack, they’ve come to get me . . . he’s dead! . . . Hugh! Hugh! Wake up!” she said hoarsely, and seized him by the arm. And he woke, his sparse hair tousled, grumbling sleepily.

“Hugh! Hugh!” she whispered. “It’s Papa — he’s dying . . . they’re at the door now! . . . oh, for heaven’s sake, get up!” she almost screamed in a state of frenzied despair and exasperation. “Aren’t you good for anything! . . . Don’t lie there like a dummy — Papa may be dying! Get up! Get up! There’s someone at the door! My God, you can at least go and find out what it is! Oh, get up, get up, I tell you! . . . Don’t leave everything to me! You’re a man — you can at least do that much!”— and by now her voice was almost sobbing with exasperation.

“Well, ALL right, ALL right!” he grumbled in a tone of protest, “I’m going! Only give me a moment to find my slippers and my bath-robe, won’t you?”

And, hair still twisted, tall, bony, thin to emaciation, he felt around with his bare feet until he found his slippers, stepped gingerly into them, and put on his bath-robe, tying the cord around his waist, and looking himself over in the mirror carefully, smoothing down his rumpled hair and making a shrugging motion of the shoulders. And she looked at him with a tortured and exasperated glare, saying:

“Oh, slow, slow, slow! . . . My God, you’re the slowest thing that ever lived! . . . I could walk from here to California in the time it takes you to get out of bed.”

“Well, I’M going, I’M going,” he said again with surly protest. “I don’t want to go to the front door naked — only give me a minute to get ready, won’t you?”

“Then, go, go, go!” she almost screamed at him. “They’ve been there for fifteen minutes. . . . They’re almost hammering the door down — for God’s sake go and find out if they’ve come because of Papa, I beg of you.”

And he went hastily, still preserving a kind of dignity as he stepped along gingerly in his bath-robe and thin pyjamaed legs. And when he got to the door, there was no one, nothing there. The street outside was bare and empty, the houses along the street dark and hushed with their immense and still attentiveness of night and silence and the sleepers, the trees were standing straight and lean with their still young leafage — and he came back again growling surlily.

“Ah-h, there’s no one there! You didn’t hear anything! . . . You imagined the whole thing!”

And for a moment her eyes had a dull appeased look, she plucked at her large cleft chin and said in an abstracted tone: “Ah-hah! . . . Well, come on back to bed, honey, and get some sleep.”

“Ah, get some sleep!” he growled, scowling angrily as he took off his robe — and scuffed the slippers from his feet. “What chance do I have to get any sleep any more with you acting like a crazy woman half the time?”

She snickered hoarsely and absently, still plucking at her chin, as he lay down beside her; she kissed him, and put her arms around him with a mothering gesture.

“Well, I know, Hugh,” she said quietly, “you’ve had a hard time of it, but some day we will............