The door opened, and Lois, with a face of awful calm, glided up to him. She took the pistol from his relaxed hold; her lips refused to speak.
"Why, you needn't have been afraid, dear," he said at once, looking at her with a gentle surprise. "I'm not a coward, to go and leave you that way. You need never be afraid of that, Lois."
"No," said Lois, with smiling, white lips. She could not have told what made the frantic, overmastering fear, under the impulse of which she had suddenly thrown the baby down on the bed and fled to Justin—what strange force of thought-transference, imagined or real, had called her there.
She busied herself making him comfortable, divining his wants and getting things for him, simply and noiselessly, and then knelt down beside him where he lay, putting her arms around him.
"You oughtn't to be doing this for me; I ought to be taking care of you," he said, with a tender self-reproach that seemed to come from a new, hitherto unknown Justin, who watched her face to see if it showed fatigue, and counted the steps she took for him.
The doctor came, and sent him off sternly to bed, and came again later. The last time he looked grave, ordered complete quiet, and left sedatives to insure it. Grip, brought on by overwork, had evidently taken a disregarded hold some time before, and must be reckoned with now. What Mr. Alexander imperatively needed was rest, and, above all things, freedom from care. Freedom from care!
Every footfall was taken to-day with reference to this. An impression of Justin as of something noble and firm seemed to emanate from the room where he lay and fill the house; in his complete abdication, he dominated as never before. More than that, there seemed to be a peculiar poignancy, a peculiar sweetness, in every little thing done for him; it made one honorable to serve him.
The light was still brightly that of day at a quarter of seven, when Dosia, who had been putting Zaidee and Redge to bed, came into Lois' room, and found her with crimson cheeks and eyes red from weeping. At Dosia's entrance she rose at once from her chair, and Dosia saw that she was partially dressed in her walking-skirt; she flared out passionately in speech as she was crossing the room, as if in answer to some implied criticism:
"I don't care what you say—I don't care what anybody says. I can't stand it any longer, when it's killing him! He can't rest unless he has that money. Am I to just sit down and let my husband die, when he's in such trouble as this? Is that all I can do? Why, whose trouble is it? Mine as well as his! If it's his responsibility, it's mine, too—mine as well as his!"
She hit her soft hand against the sharp edge of the table, and was unconscious that it bled. "If there's nobody else to get that money for him, I'll rise up and get it. He's stood alone long enough—long enough! He says there is no help left, but he forgets that there's his wife!"