rd away: "Of course I'd say 'my' to
any child; it didn't mean anything! But suppose the orderly had heard
me?" Even while he thus denied the Holy Spirit within him, he was
feeling again that hot, ridiculous tug on his ear. "_I_ was the only one
who could manage him," he thought.... "Of course what I said didn't mean
anything."

He stopped on the bridge and looked down into the water--black and
swift and smooth between floating cakes of ice. Now and then a star
glimmered on a slipping ripple; on the iron bridge farther up the
river a row of lights were strung like a necklace across the empty
darkness.... Somewhere, in the maze of streets at one end of the bridge,
was Eleanor, lying in bed with a desperate headache. Somewhere, in the
maze of streets at the other end of the bridge, was Lily, taking "his"
little Jacky to the hospital. Somewhere, on one of the hillsides beyond
Medfield, was Edith in the schoolhouse. And Eleanor was loving him and
trusting him; and Lily was "blessing him" (so she had told him) for his
goodness; and Edith was "betting on him"! ... "I wonder if anybody was
ever as rotten as I am?" Maurice pondered.

Then he forgot his "rottenness," and smiled. "He obeyed _me_! Lily
couldn't do a thing with him; what did he mean about the 'present'? I
believe it was that old cigar! He must have seen me pitch it into the
gutter. He wanted me to carry him; wouldn't look at that orderly! What
made him grab my ear?"

When Maurice said that, down, down, under his rage at Lily, under his
fear of exposure, under his nauseating disgust at himself--something
stirred, something fluttered. The tremor of a moral conception:

Paternal pride.

"_What_ a grip!"

CHAPTER XXIV

After a tornado comes quietness; again the sun shines, and birds sing,
and many small things look up, unhurt. It was incredible to Maurice,
eating his breakfast the next morning, reading his paper, opening his
letters, and glancing at a pale Eleanor, heavy-eyed and silent, that his
world was still the same world that it had been before he had picked up
the sealed telegram on the hall table. He asked Eleanor how she felt;
told her to take care of herself; said he'd not be at home to dinner,
and went off to his office.... He was safe! Those two minutes in the
dining room of Lily's flat, while the white-jacketed orderly was trying
to persuade the protesting Jacky to let him carry him downstairs, had
removed any immediate alarm; Lily had prom