"No, Jimmie—not if the man has brains enough with which to think."
That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my clamped and aching skull.
"Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to her."
Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow.
Some moments elapsed before Alicia could come to me and during that time I had a mad impulse to fly from it all, to, seize my hat and steal away, to take a train to the city and not to return, until it was all over. But I waited nevertheless and Alicia, who had been helping Griselda, came running out flushed, with concern in her eyes.
"Alicia," I began miserably, "I have tried to screw up my courage to tell the children about the coming of—of their father. But I simply can't do it, Alicia; it's—it's beyond me. I—I want you to tell them," I faltered like a guilty schoolboy. The girl winced perceptibly but—
"All right," she answered; "do you mean now?"
"About half-past six—the train gets here at six thirty-five. You take them into the garden—and keep them there until after the men come, and—I call you."
"Yes—Uncle Ranny," she whispered—"but, oh, please don't worry about it so much!"
"No, my dear," I murmured and at that moment I felt closer to her than to any other living being. To take the children out of the house upon the coming of their father—it sounded like a funeral. And it was at that moment—my funeral. And the rest of the afternoon was a blur and the encompassing world was a shadow. It was broken; no, it was too insubstantial for breaking. It kept thinning and receding away from me and I was left a dully throbbing entity in the primal chaos before Creation.