She was so tired that her eyes closed even as she gave me the admonition. I drew the covers closer about her, raised the window a trifle, drew down the shades, and left her.
As I closed the door softly behind me, I heard the querulous voice of the invalid:
"Margaret! Margaret! Where are you?"
As I bent over my husband's mother she smiled up at me. Her illness had done more to bridge the chasm, between us than years of companionship could have done. One cannot cherish bitterness toward an old woman helplessly ill and dependent upon one. And I think in her own peculiar way she realized that I was giving her all I had of strength and good will.
"What can I do for you?" I asked, returning her smile.
"I want something to eat, and after that I want to have a talk with
Richard. Where is he?"
"He is asleep," I answered mechanically. In a moment my thoughts had flown back to the day my mother-in-law and I had met Harry Underwood in trip Aquarium, and she had discovered he was Lillian Gale's husband.
What was it Dicky's mother had said that day in the Aquarium rest room?
"I have a duty to you to perform," she had declared, "a very painful duty, which involves the reviving of an old controversy with my son. I beg that you will not try to find out anything concerning its nature. It is better far that you do not."
She had wished to go home at once and talk to Dicky. I had persuaded her to go first to Fraunces's Tavern for luncheon. There she had been taken ill, and in the days that had intervened between that time and the moment I leaned over her bedside she and we around her had been fighting for her life. There had been no opportunity for a confidential talk between mother and son. And I was determined that there should be none yet.