n was beside them in a stride. He took the hand offered
him, but his gaze also was on the white face of the woman between them.
"We will do it together," he told her. "Rest assured. It shall be done."

The corners of Lydia's mouth twitched nervously. "You are a good man,"
she said to her godfather. She looked at Rankin for a moment without
speaking, and then turned toward the house, wavering. "Will you help me
back?" she said to the doctor, her voice quite flat and toneless; "I am
horribly tired."

* * * * *

When the doctor came back again to the arbor, Mrs. Sandworth was with
him, her bearing, like his, that of a person in the midst of some
cataclysmic upheaval. It was evident that her brother had told her.
Without greeting Rankin, she sat down and fixed her eyes on his face.
She did not remove them during the talk that followed.

The doctor stood by the table, drumming with his fingers and grimacing.
"You must know," he finally made a beginning with difficulty, "I don't
know whether you realize, not being a physician, that she is really not
herself. She has for the present a mania for providing as she thinks
best for her children's future. Of course no one not a monomaniac would
so entirely ignore your side, would conceive so strange an idea. She is
so absorbed in her own need that she does not realize what an unheard-of
request she is making. To burden yourself with two young children--to
mortgage all your future--"

Rankin broke in with a shaking voice and a face of exultation: "Good
God, Doctor! Don't grudge me this one chance of my life!"

The doctor stared, bewildered. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"About myself. I don't do it often--let me now. Do you think I haven't
realized all along that what you said of me is true--that I have done
nothing? Done nothing but succeed smugly in keeping myself in comfort
outside the modern economic treadmill! What else could I do? I'm no
orator, to convince other people. I haven't any universal panacea to
offer! I'm only an inarticulate countryman, a farmer's son, with the
education the state gives everyone--who am I, to try to lead? Apparently
there was nothing for me to do but ignobly to take care of myself--but
now, God be thanked! I have my chance. Someone has been hurt in their
infernal squirrel-cage, and I can help--"

The older man was looking at him piercingly, as though struck by a
sudden thought. He now cut h