"They brought him in the same day I came," he ventured, half musingly.
"At the beginning he made a lot of noise, but lately…"
She set the tray down upon the bed. "They had to put him in a strait-jacket," she said, significantly. "He's quite hopeless. He tried to kill his wife and his child … and he set fire to the home. He's an Italian."
"Yes … so I was told."
The nurse departed and he drank the cup of muddy coffee on the tray. He laid the cup down and sat staring at the square cut in the center of the thick oak door leading into the corridor. Presently he heard the swish of a woman's skirt passing the opening, followed by the pattering footsteps of childhood. There came the sound of soft weeping … the swishing skirt passed again, and the pattering footsteps died away. The nurse returned.
"The Italian's wife and child have just been here," she said. "They let the woman look for the last time at her husband through the hole in the door."
Fred put his head between his hands. "He tried to murder her and yet she came to see him," he muttered, almost inaudibly. "I dare say he abused her in his day, too."
The woman gave him a sharp glance. "You're married, aren't you?"
He looked up suddenly, reading the inference in her question. "Yes … but my wife won't come…"
The nurse left the room and he put his face in his hands again. The sun was traveling swiftly. He shifted his position so that he could get the full benefit of its warmth. He thought that he had banished the memory of Helen Starratt forever, but he found his mind re-creating that final scene with her in all its relentless bitterness… She had come that day to salve her conscience … to pay her tithe to form and respectability … perhaps moved to fleeting pity. He had seen through every word, every gesture, every glance. Her transparency was loathsome. Why did he read her so perfectly now? Was it because she felt herself too secure for further veilings, or had his eyes been suddenly opened?
She was not flaming nor reckless nor consumed utterly; instead, there was a complacent coolness about her, as if passion had drawn every warmth within her for its own consummation. She had still her instincts in the leash of calculation, going through the motions of conventionality. The lifted eyebrows and curling lip which she had directed at Ginger's departing figure were not inconsistent. Dissimulation was such an art with her that it was unconscious.