and went, solicitously, toward Archie and his rumpled clothes.

Even Allison stopped smiling, even Devereau forgot his curious
amusement, at the livid change which came over Steve's face with that
answer which she flung at him. The boy fell away a step before her
fierce little visage; he crooked one arm, over the cheek where her
fists had beaten the skin pink a moment before. And then her meaning
struck him like a blow between the eyes.

Shoulders slumped forward, head hanging low, he wheeled on heel and
started for the gap in the hedge. Caleb could not move, nor did
Allison, whose wits were quick enough in most things. But Garry
Devereau followed and overtook his friend. He did not speak to him; he
merely dropped one hand upon his drooping shoulders. And yet the men,
had they talked for an hour, could not have conveyed all that there was
in that second of contact. For it proved electrical in its effect.
Steve whirled again and came marching back, head up now--back to the
group which had not moved. Straight up to Barbara he went and faced
her once again.

"I wa'n't good enough to be your knight, was I?" he accused her in a
hushed and vibrant voice. "I--I don't know enough, ner I can't talk
good enough, to be your knight. I ain't good enough fer you! But I'm
a-goin' to be--do you hear? I'm a-goin' to be--an' when I am . . .
when I am . . . then I'll come back to you!"

This time, rigid as a lance, he disappeared from sight. Caleb stood
staring at the ground. Allison stood and stared at the horizon.

And when Barbara finally started, white of face and silent, toward the
stucco house, Caleb, too, turned and followed his boy home. It was the
first time in his memory that he and Dexter Allison had parted in
anger, and at that moment Caleb believed that he hated the man and all
that was his!

Steve had gone straight to his room, but one glimpse of his bloodless
face had told Sarah too much and too little. After her brother had
explained she would not let him go upstairs to the boy.

"It will be better to leave him alone for a while," she said. "It has
been coming for days, this thing. I think I knew it would come--but
how could we have stopped it, Cal? And you won't believe me, but it's
because Barbara Allison cares more for our boy's little finger than she
could for a hundred Archie Wickershams that she--she said what she did.
Women do those things, and even I, who am a woman, can't tell you why!"