"Child!" she repeated. "That was a pose to attract. How ridiculous to show you her books! She didn't look at you like a child, nor you at her."
For a moment silence prevailed. Fetzer meditated advancing. But Hilda had not finished; she found Stephen's silence far more irritating than his speech. She turned fiercely upon him with a remark which, while it was not new, was uttered with truly original ferocity.
"You'd like me to be dead; then you could live as you pleased on my money!"
Fetzer withdrew. She went through a passageway to the office where again Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane waited.
"I guess Doctor'll be out soon."
Neither of the women answered—sometimes she believed that they observed nothing, sometimes she believed that they knew everything.
After loitering for about ten minutes in the passage she again approached the library. Now Stephen was alone, sitting with his back to the door.
"Miss Knowlton and Miss MacVane are here, Doctor." She spoke as though they had arrived at this moment.
"Thank you," said Stephen, without turning. Fetzer saw that though his head was bent there was no book on his knee. For the thousandth time she breathed a silent petition in his behalf. The ways of the Creator were, indeed, past all finding out.