“I will see Dr. Parker Steel. I will ask him by what right he has dared to act as he has acted.”
Her words seemed to shake her husband from his stupor.
“Kate, you cannot do it.”
“Why not?”
“Beg a favor of that fop! Besides, the case has gone too far. The facts are there. I blundered. I knew that I had lost my nerve.”
She looked at him with a woman’s pity, her pride and her love still strong and heroic in their trust.
“It was not you, dear—not you.”
“Not I, Kate, but my baser self. Fate takes us when we are in the toils.”
They heard the children in the garden, their laughter close beneath the window. Murchison’s hands caught the arms of his chair. His children’s happiness seemed part of the mockery of fate.
“Don’t let them come in. I can’t bear it. I—” and he broke down suddenly into that most pitiful and tragic pass when a strong man’s anguish brings him even to tears.