so that neither dared to look directly at the other as they stood there
in the obscure light which struggled through two dusty panes of glass at
the top of the next flight.

"You must not stay here," he said. "You're very weary; you will be
liable to take the disease. I am going to send a professional nurse."

This solicitude for her was so like the Charley of other times that it
made Phillida tremble with a grateful emotion she could not quite
conceal.

"A professional nurse will be better for Tommy. But I can not leave
while Mrs. Martin has any great need for me." She could not confess to
him the responsibility she felt in the case on account of her having
undertaken it the evening before as a faith-doctor.

"What is the best way to get a nurse?" asked Millard, regarding her
downcast face, and repressing a dreadful impulse to manifest his
reviving affection.

"Dr. Beswick will know," said Phillida. "I will send him out." She was
glad to escape into the room again, for she was afraid to trust her own
feelings longer in Millard's company. The arrangement was made that Dr.
Beswick should send a nurse, and then Millard and Beswick went
down-stairs together.

Phillida stayed till Mr. Martin came home, hoping to soften the scene
between husband and wife. In his heart Martin revered his wife's good
sense, but he thought it due to his sex to assert himself once in a
while against a wife whose superiority he could not but recognize. As
soon as he had accomplished this feat, thereby proving his masculinity,
he always repented it. For so long as his wife approved his course he
was sure that he could not be far astray; but whenever his vanity had
made him act against her judgment he was a mariner out of reckoning, and
he made haste to take account of the pole star of her good sense.

He had just now been impelled by certain ugly elements in his nature to
give his wife a taste of his power as the head of the family, the more
that she had dared to make sport of his new science and of his new
oracle, Miss Bowyer. But once he had become individually responsible for
Tommy's life without the security of Mrs. Martin's indorsement on the
back of the bond, he became extremely miserable. As noontime approached
he grew so restless that he got excused from his bench early, and came
home.

Motives of delicacy had prevented any communication between Phillida and
Mrs. Martin regarding the probable attitude of Mr. Martin toward the
tr