"Oh, Laurie, you will be kind to me," she said at last. "I can never do it all alone. You must help—oh, my dear, I have needed you so."
"It will be right. You know that it is right," I whispered.
"You must find the way, then, dear— I have thought so long that it was wrong to tell you that even now I can't tell what is right. Only—God doesn't let some things be unless He means them—but I can't see the way. You must find it now, for her and us too."
What feeling I had of another presence I do not know; but half uneasily I turned. Between the curtains of the doorway stood Mrs. Tabor, her hands raised above her head gripped the curtains as if for support, so that she seemed rather to hang there than to stand; her eyes looked through and beyond us vacantly, and the pretty old-young face was twisted like a tragic mask. Then the curtains dropped before her, and from the hall came the gasp of a stifling sob. Lady was out of my arms and away as if I had not been there. Her cool voice pleaded for a moment with the rising hysteria without. Then all sound died, and I was left utterly alone; the silence of the great room about me, and before my mind the world of reality and the battle still to fight.
CHAPTER XXIII
I STAND BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
After a few empty minutes, I went quietly out of the house, and at the end of the drive paused to look back over the sunlit lawn with its bright flower-beds and heavy trees. My work was plain enough before me now; I saw what I had to do, and the only question was my method of approach. The impossibility of it somehow did not interest me. I did not want to think the situation over, but merely to decide at what point I should first take hold upon it; and I was eager to begin. As I stood there, I saw Doctor Reid, in loose flannels and with a tennis racket in his hand, come in the side gate and walk jerkily toward the garage in the rear. Here was one thing to be done at least, and I might as well attend to it while I was on the ground.
His springy step was on the stairs as I entered the building after him, and I overtook him at the top, shuffling from one foot to the other before an oaken door, while he hunted through his pockets for the key. He turned sharply at the sound of my coming.
"What are you doing here?" was his greeting.