Grant, who heard the Doctor’s news, did not seem to be disturbed by it. His mind was occupied with more personal matters. He stood by a pillar, looking off into the summer day.
“Well, I suppose,” he looked at his clothes, brushed the dust from the top of his shoes by rubbing them separately against the calves of his legs, straightened his ready-made tie and felt of the buttons on his vest, “I suppose,” he repeated, “I may just as well go now as at any other time,” and he strode down the steps and made straight for the Van Dorn home.
When he came to the Van Dorn house he saw Margaret sitting alone in the deep shade of a vine-screened piazza. She wore a loose flowing purple house garment, of a bizarre pattern which accented her physical charms. But not until he had begun to mount the steps before her did he notice that she was sound asleep in a gaping and disenchanting stupor. Yet his footstep aroused her, and she started and gazed wildly at him: “Why–why–you–why, Grant!”
“Yes, Margaret,” he answered as he stood hat in hand on the top step before her, ignoring her trembling and the terror in her eyes. “I’ve come to have a talk with you–about Kenyon.”
She looked about her, listened a second, shuddered, and said with quivering facial muscles and shaky voice, “Yes–oh, yes–about Kenyon–yes–Kenyon Adams. Yes, I know.”
The eyes she turned on him were dull and her face was slumped, as though the soul had gone from it. A tremor was visible in her hands, and the color was gone from her drooping lips. She stared at him for a moment, stupidly, then irritation came into her voice, as he sat unbidden in a porch chair near her. “I didn’t tell you to sit down.”
504“No.” He turned his face and caught her eyes. “But I’ll be comfortable sitting down, and we’ve got more or less talking to do.”
He could see that she was perturbed, and fear wrote itself all over her face. But he did not know that she was vainly trying to get control of herself. The power of the little brown pellets left her while she slept, and she was uncertain of herself and timid. “I–I’m sick–well–I–I–why, I can’t talk to you now. Go ’way,” she cried. “Go ’way, won’t you, please–please go ’way, and come some other time.”
“No–now’s as good a time as any,” he replied. “At any rate, I’ll tell you what’s on my mind. Mag, now pay attention.” He turned his face to her. “The time has come when Lila Van Dorn and her mother must know who Kenyon is.”
She looked vacantly at him, then started and chattered, “Wh-wh-wh-wha-what are you s-s-sas-saying–do you mean?”