"Good Lord—there—she's fainted! Get some water and a drop of brandy, dad!"
"Poor child—it's so fearfully unpleasant," murmured Bartell as he came back with a glass and decanter. "It's that tenement house thing that's got on her nerves."
"An unpleasant business," returned his father, "all that rot—mighty unpleasant!"
Ewing waited in the outer room until he heard the broken murmur of her voice and knew that she had recovered. Then he went quickly out, the portrait under his arm. He had the feeling that it had been contaminated by Teevan's touch.
He began dismantling his studio that night. He stopped in the work once to look out over the roofs, glowing luridly under a half moon. This was because the pleading of the woman still rang in his ears—"Don't let him tell you anything"—and the whole entreating look of her flashed back to him. Then the big, slow tears of pity gathered in his eyes to set the chimney pots dancing before him.
"If only I hadn't owed him money!" he muttered, beside himself with pity and hatred.
It was not until the day before they started West that Mrs. Laithe learned the secret of this pity of Ewing's that had so puzzled her. Alden Teevan begged a moment with her in the afternoon of that day, and she, sunk in the languor of her sickness, received him where she lay, in her own sitting-room.
He swept her with a long, knowing look as he entered, reading, she saw, the truth about her condition.
"I'd gladly go with you, Nell," he began—"let my own walls close at the same time." But she would have no bald admissions.
"I'm not going, Alden—I'm only a bit run down. I shall pick up in a month out there." He detected her insincerity but only smiled in a hurt way.