"She thinks you're her child!" he protested again, but less harshly.
"Yes," admitted Sheila gently, "like I thought she—" And then, at some sudden counsel of her heart, she exclaimed: "You stay here. I'll know what to do!"
It seemed to Ted an unbelievable thing that he saw happen before him then. For Sheila stepped quickly forward to meet the hurrying, pitiful creature who sought her; stepped forward and straight into the woman's arms. As he stared, a shudder of disgust shook Ted from head to foot. "It's horrible!" he muttered to himself. "It's horrible for Sheila to let Crazy Lisbeth hug her!" But he could not go and draw Sheila away. His repulsion would not permit him to approach the spectacle that excited it.
And meanwhile the little girl was murmuring, still in the fold of Lisbeth's arm, words that he could not understand, but that drifted to him with the soft sounds of pleadings and promises.
"Sheila!" he called peremptorily.
She did not reply, but talked on to Lisbeth, interrupted now and then by the latter, but evidently not discouraged in her purpose of persuasion.
"Sheila!" Ted called again, and this time uneasily.
And now she answered, over her shoulder, and with a motion that held him back: "We're going home!"
At that he understood what she was bent upon. She had been coaxing Lisbeth to go home. But why should she concern herself about one who was used to roam the whole countryside at any hour of the day or night, walking unmolested in the desolate safety of her affliction? Why, above all, should Sheila go home with her?
For that, apparently, was what Sheila meant to do. She had already started onward with her self-appointed charge, and though the woods had grown more shadowy, Ted could see the two figures plainly, walking close together and linked by the woman's arm. That arm about Sheila's shoulder—Crazy Lisbeth's arm!—set him shuddering again as violently as the first embrace had done. It was an affront to every fiber of his thoroughly normal being. But still he could not go nearer to remove it; by the law of his own nature he had to stay outside the circle of Lisbeth's madness and Sheila's folly. And his sense of responsibility had, perforce, to appease itself with his following them at a discreet range—a distant and sulking protector.