through his shady period, like the rest."

That night it was Mrs. Wheeler's turn to lie awake. Again and again she
went over Nina's words, and her troubled mind found a basis in fact
for them. Jim had been getting money from her, to supplement his small
salary; he had been going out a great deal at night, and returning very
late; once or twice, in the morning, he had looked ill and his eyes had
been bloodshot, as though he had been drinking.

Anxiety gripped her. There were so many temptations for young men, so
many who waited to waylay them. A girl. Not a good girl, perhaps.

She raised herself on her elbow and looked at her sleeping husband. Men
were like that; they begot children and then forgot them. They never
looked ahead or worried. They were taken up with business, and always
they forgot that once they too had been young and liable to temptation.

She got up, some time later, and tiptoed to the door of Jim's room.
Inside she could hear his heavy, regular breathing. Her boy. Her only
son.

She went back and crawled carefully into the bed.

There was an acrimonious argument between Jim and his father the next
morning, and Jim slammed out of the house, leaving chaos behind him. It
was then that Elizabeth learned that her father was going away. He said:

"Maybe I'm wrong, mother. I don't know. Perhaps, when I come back,
I'll look around for a car. I don't want him driven to doing underhand
things."

"Are you going away?" Elizabeth asked, surprised.

It appeared that he was. More than that, that he was going West with
Dick. It was all arranged and nobody had told her anything about it.

She was hurt and a trifle offended, and she cried a little about it.
Yet, as Dick explained to her later that day, it was simple enough. Her
father needed a rest, and besides, it was right that he should know all
about Dick's life before he came to Haverly.

"He's going to make me a present of something highly valuable, you
know."

"But it looks as though he didn't trust you!"

"He's being very polite about it; but, of course, in his eyes I'm a
common thief, stealing--"

She would not let him go on.

A certain immaturity, the blind confidence of youth in those it
loves, explains Elizabeth's docility at that time. But underneath her
submission that day was a growing uneasiness, fiercely suppressed.
Buried deep, the battle between absolute trust and fear was beginning, a
battle which was so rapidly to mature her.

Ni