Jock was holding the boyish hand in a grim grip. He tried to speak, but could not. He stared silently at the muffled figure in the long chair, then with an impatient grunt, dropped his hold and actually fled in order to hide the feelings that surged in his heart.
Left alone, Drew sank wearily back and closed his eyes. The lately-acquired strength proved often a deserter when it was tested, and for the moment the sick man felt all the depression and inertia of the past. He felt, and that was his only gain. Before, he had been too indifferent to feel or care.
"Poor, little, pretty thing!" he thought, with Joyce's face before him against the closed eyelids. "She couldn't stand it. She didn't look as if she could. I'm sorry she had to find her way out by such a commonplace path. What was Gaston thinking of to let her? He knew—he should have kept his hands off and not blasted what little hope might have been hers."
Half dreamily he recalled what Filmer had just told him. His weakened body held no firm clutch on his imagination at that time of his life—it ran riot, often giving him abnormal pleasure by its vivid touches; occasionally causing him excruciating pain as he suffered, in an exaggerated way, with suffering.
He saw Joyce, bruised and shuddering as a result of Jude's cruelty; he saw her poor little idols dashed to pieces before her eyes; he felt her grief for the dead baby, and when he remembered Jock's account of her taking the small casket to the only spot where she herself was safe, the weak tears rolled down his cold, thin face. He was too exhausted and full of pain to wipe them away.
He heard his aunt and sister come out of the house.
"Asleep!" whispered the older woman in a glad tone.
"I'll go for a walk," Constance added, tip-toeing away. "Have the milk and egg ready when he wakes, auntie. Did you ever see such a day? I feel as if I had just been made, and placed in a world that hadn't been used up by millions of people."
They were gone, and Drew sighed relievedly.
Presently he opened his eyes, if he had slept he was not conscious of it, and there sat the girl of his dreams near him.