The Doctor had no time to reply. There was a stir in the house, and a child’s steps came running through the hall. Lila stopped on the porch, hesitating between the two men. The Doctor put out his arms for her. Van Dorn casually reached out his hand. She ran to her father and cried, 238“Up–Daddy–up,” and jumped to his shoulder as he took her. The Doctor walked down the steps as his daughter came out of the door.
The man and the woman looked at one another, but did not speak. The father put the child down and said:
“Now, Lila, run with grandpa and get a cooky from granny while your mother and I talk.”
She looked up at him with her blue eyes and her sadly puckered little face, swallowed her disappointed tears and trudged down the steps after the white-clad grandfather who was untying his horse.
When the child and the grandfather were gone the wife said in a dead, emotionless voice, looking at the parcel on the floor, “Well, Tom?”
“Well, Laura,” he repeated, “that’s about the size of it–there it is–and you know all about it. I shall not lie–this time. It’s not worth while–now.”
The woman sat in a porch chair. The man hesitated, and she said: “Sit down, Tom. I don’t know what to do or what to say,” she began. “If there were just you and me to consider, I suppose I’d say we’d have to quit. But there’s Lila. She is here and she does love you–and she has her right–the greatest right in the world to–well, to us–to a home, and a home means a father and a mother.” The man rose. He put his hands in his coat pockets and stood by the porch column, making no reply.
The wife continued, “I can’t even speak of what you have done to me, Tom. But it will hurt when I’m an old woman–I want to hide my face from every one–even from God–when I think of what you have used me for.”
He dropped into the chair beside her, looking at the floor. Her voice had stirred some chord in his thousand-stringed heart. He reached out a hand to her.
“No, Tom,” said the wife, “I don’t want your pity.”