His father recoiled in horror, but Keith said:
“I came too late to save you by doing it myself.”
RoBards needed, above all things just then, someone to understand, to accept, to approve. He was like a man dying of thirst in a desert when he looks up and sees a friend standing by with water and food and strong arms.
He fell into his son’s embrace and clenched him tight, and was clenched tight. There was no need for RoBards to ask his boy to keep this secret. The child was a father and a husband and he understood. They fell back and wrung hands, and RoBards winced as he saw that the backs of his hands were bleeding from the marks of Patty’s fingernails.
Then the room filled with the hurried family drowsily regarding death: Keith’s wife with her child toddling, upheld by a clutch of her nightgown; Aletta and the tiny Jessamine, whom Patty had named; the old nurse whom RoBards had sent off to bed hours ago.
Everybody was ashamed of the thought that it was best for Patty to be no more, for it was too hideous a thing to say of a soul. It was a villainous thought even to think that Patty was better dead.
When the venerable Doctor Matson was fetched at last, RoBards was glad to have Aletta tell him how she came in and what she saw:
The Doctor looked unconvinced, puzzled, then convinced. RoBards feared that Matson would look at him with dismay. In the morning, before a stranger, his passionate deed did not look so tender, so devoted as in the night. But the Doctor avoided any challenge of RoBards’ gaze and contented himself with saying:
“She was a beautiful little lady.”
And that made RoBards remember how Patty had looked when she read in the paper the terrible word, “was”—a terrible word for beauty, youth, joy, but a beautiful one for pain, weeping, and being afraid.