“No, no!” she cried, beating back the suggestion with baffled hands. “You never had David look at you with condemnation. Oh, I would rather have him slap my face. I could resent that. But to have him condemn—and then forgive....” She swayed weakly, all her force concentrated in the relentless mouth. “Judith, if he dies, it will be on my head. You told me that it was as bad to sin in thought as to carry out the desire. I wanted to kill David. Don’t look at me like that. I have to tell you. There is no one else I can trust—and I’ll babble it, when I don’t know I’m talking, if I don’t get it out of my mind.”
“How do you mean, mother?”
“Twice I tried. Once when you were in Europe—when his health was so poor—and I was going to give him the wrong medicine. And six weeks ago, when he brought a lot of money home—and I thought it would look as if a burglar did it. It was just after you took Theo to New York, and we were alone in the house. At the last moment, my courage failed. But if he dies, I will be held accountable for his murder. Judith, he has to live. Don’t you see....”
IV
And thus it came about that the great specialist had been sent for. Already he had been up there in David’s room for more than an hour. Now a door was opening, two pairs of feet were descending the stairs. Before those in the sun-room realized it, the distinguished man had passed to the waiting cab and was gone. Lavinia was on her feet, aquiver with excitement.
“Where is he going? I want to ask him a hundred questions.”
“He has told me everything you need to know,” the old family physician told her sternly. “He will send us another nurse from St. Louis—a young man capable of handling a dead weight. My diagnosis, unfortunately, was correct.”
“Will he get well?” Lavinia’s lips were blue and her eyes protruded.
“We must wait and see. He will be paralysed from the waist down.”
David to sit in a wheel-chair the rest of his life! Vine staggered from the room. Her daughter-in-law followed, fearful for one or the other of those two actors in life’s sorry drama. But the stricken woman only paused an instant at her husband’s door, and passed on to the performance of some commonplace duty. Judith returned to the lower hall, to hear Dr. Schubert say: