"I know it," she responded, reaching out to lay her hand upon David's hand.
"Something better," he repeated, in a changed voice, with an effect of shrinking to his usual proportions. His arm fell to his side, and he turned away to hide his altered look. "I'll fight for this boy," he said. "I'll fight the whole world for him."
"You looked," suggested Lilla gently, "as if you were going to fight me, too."
"You? No, you are my ally. Or, if you please, I am yours; for neither of us can do anything without you."
At midnight, when Lilla returned to the doorway of his bedroom, David was not asleep.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. A beam of light from the corridor touched her slender figure wrapped in yellow silk, and her braided hair outlined, round her head, by a narrow golden halo. The rain had ceased, and the breeze from the window was laden with the odor of the saturated earth. Falteringly he asked her if she was chilly.
She was surprised, having been aware for a long while only of this pity and this remorse.
"You have suffered to-day," she said.
He responded:
"The penalty one pays for having acquired great riches is the fear of losing them."