th an outward calmness which was, in reality,
emotional dullness. She had suffered so much that to feel vividly was
beyond her strength.

"You have the right to know it," she said, looking at him out of
brilliant, unwinking eyes. "It's about father. He was out there--on the
lawn--before he turned on the light in his room. I heard him come in, a
minute before Berne went down the back stairs and out to the lawn. And I
heard him go to his window and stand there, looking out, at least five
long minutes before he flashed on his light."

He waited, thinking she might have more to tell. Construing his silence
as reproof, she said, without changing either her expression or her
voice:

"I know--it's awful. I should have told you. Perhaps, I've done great
harm."

"You've been very brave," he consoled her, with infinite tenderness.
"But it happens that I'd already satisfied myself on that point. I knew
he'd been out there."

She was dumb, incapable of reacting to his words. Even the fact that he
was smiling, with genuine amusement, did not affect her.

"Here comes the grotesque element, the comical, that's involved in so
many tragedies," he explained. "Your father's weakness for 'cure' of
nervousness, and his shrinking from the ridicule he's suffered because
of it--there's the explanation of why he was out there that night."

She could not see significance in that, but neither could she summon
energy to say so. She wondered vaguely why he thought it funny.

"That night--rather, the early morning hours following--while the rest
of you were in the library, I looked through his room, and I found a
pair of straw sandals in the closet--such as a man could slip on and off
without having to bend down to adjust them. And they were wet, inside
and out.

"Sunday morning, when Judge Wilton and I were at his bedside, I saw on
the table a 'quack' pamphlet on the 'dew' treatment for nervousness, the
benefit of the 'wet, cooling grass' upon the feet at night. You know the
kind of thing. So----"

"Oh-h-h!" she breathed, tremulous and weak. "So that's why he was out
there! Why didn't I think? Oh, how I've suspected him of----"

"But remember," he warned; "that's why he went out. We still don't know
what he--what happened after he got out there--or why he's refused to
say that he ever was out there. When we think of this, and other things,
and, too, his call tonight on Mrs. Brace, for bribery--leaving what we
thought was a sickbed--"