"It isn't his bedtime yet," she excused herself. She rested her cheek on the child's head and looked over at the doctor. She wore a dark crimson silk, the bosom filled with sheer white muslin that was caught together under her soft chin by a little pearl pin; her lace undersleeves were pushed back so that William could see the lovely lines of her white wrists. Her parted hair fell in soft, untidy waves down over her ears; she was staring absently across David's head into the fire.
"I wish," William said, "that you would go and call on old Mr. Wright some time. Take David with you. It would cheer him up." It seemed to William King, thinking of the forlorn old man in his big four-poster, that such a vision of maternity and peace would be pleasant to look upon. "He wouldn't use David's bad word to you, I am sure."
"Wouldn't he?" she said.
For once the doctor's mind was nimble, and he said in quick expostulation: "Come, come; you mustn't be morbid. You are thinking about poor Sam and blaming yourself. Why, Mrs. Richie, you are no more responsible for his folly than I am."
She shook her head. "That day at the funeral, I thought how they used to bring the murderer into the presence of the man he had killed."
William King was really displeased. "Now, look here, you must stop this sort of thing! It's not only foolish, but it's dangerous. We can none of us play with our consciences without danger; they cut both ways."
Mrs. Richie was silent. The doctor got up and planted himself on the hearth-rug, his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat tails.
"Let's have it out: How could you help it because that poor boy fell in love? You couldn't help being yourself—could you? And Sam couldn't help being sentimental. Your gentleness and goodness were like something he had never seen before. But you had to stop the sentimentality, of course; that was just your duty. And I know how wisely you did it—and kindly. But the boy was always a self-absorbed dreamer; the mental balance was too delicate; it dipped the wrong way; his mind went. To feel it was your fault is absolute nonsense. Now there! I've never been so out of patience with you before," he ended smiling; "but you deserve it."
"I don't deserve it," she said; "I wish I did."
"When I spoke about goodness," the doctor amended, "I didn't mean to reflect on his father and mother. Mrs. Wright is one of the best women in the world. I only meant—" William sat down and looked into the fire. "Well; just plain goodness isn't necessarily—attractive. A man—at least a boy like Sam, admires goodness, of course; but he does sort of hanker after prettiness;" William's eyes dwelt on her bent head, on the sheer muslin under David's cheek, on the soft incapable hands that always made him think of white apple-blossoms, clasped around the child's yielding body;—"Yes; something pretty, and pleasant, and sweet; that's what a man—I mean a boy, Sam was only a boy; really wants. And his mother, good as she is, is not,—well; I don't know how to express it."