ely
to their house. He endeavored, by shifting her position, to reduce the
jarring of the uneven progress. He realized that she was in a continual
agony, and, in that new ability to share it through the dawning
consciousness of its brute actuality in Lettice, it roused in him an
impotent fury of rebellion. It took the form of an increasing passion of
anger at the inanimate stones of the road, against Mrs. Caley's meager
profile on the dusty hood of the buggy. He whispered enraged oaths, worked
himself into an insanity of temper. Lettice grew rigid in his arms. For a
while she iterated dully, like the beating of a sluggish heart
"bad ... bad ... bad." Then dread wiped all other expression from her
face; then, again, pain pinched her features.

The buggy creaked down the decline to their dwelling. Gordon supported
Lettice to their room; then he stood on the porch without, waiting. The
rugged horse, still hitched, snatched with coarse, yellow teeth at the
grass. Suddenly Mrs. Caley appeared at a door: she spoke, breaking the
irascible silence of months, dispelling the accumulating ill-will of her
pent resentment, with hasty, disjointed words:

"... quick as you can ... the doctor."

XIX

A hoarse, thin cry sounded from within the Makimmon dwelling. It
fluctuated with intolerable pain and died abruptly away, instantly
absorbed in the brooding calm of the valley, lost in the vast, indifferent
serenity of noon. But its echo persisted in Gordon's thoughts and
emotions. He was sitting by the stream, before his house; and, as the cry
had risen, he had moved suddenly, as though an invisible hand had touched
him upon the shoulder. He sat reflected on the sliding water against the
reflection of the far, blue sky. One idea ran in a circle through his
brain, his lips formed it soundlessly, he even spoke it aloud:

"It ain't as though I had gone," he said.

The possible consequence to Lettice of what had been a mere indecision
seemed to him out of any proportion. No, he thought, I wouldn't have gone
when the time came; when the minute came I'd have held back. Then again,
it ain't as though I had gone. A species of surprise alternated with
resentment at the gravity of the situation which had resulted from his
indiscreet conduct; the agony of that cry from within the house was too
deep to have proceeded from ... it wasn't as though he had gone ... he
wouldn't have gone, anyway.

He heard footsteps on the porch, and turne