ly to touch the sympathies she couldn't have
done it to more effect. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, her hands
were loosely clasped, and she was sitting, like a child, with her feet
drawn up under her on the rung of the chair. She looked at him in a
solemn relief but, he saw with a relief of his own, no sensitiveness to
his presence apart from the effect it might have on her father.

"He's asleep," she said, in a whisper. "I'm sitting here to listen."

Jeffrey nodded at her in a bluff way designed to express his certainty
that everything was going to be on its legs again now he had come home.
For the first time he felt like the man in the house, and the thin tonic
braced him. He opened the door of his father's room and went in. The
colonel's voice came at once:

"That you, Jeff?"

"Yes," said Jeff. He sat down by the bedside in the straight-backed
chair that had evidently been comfortable enough for the sisters'
anxious watch. "What's the matter, father?"

The colonel moved slightly nearer the edge of the bed. His eyes
brightened, Jeff noted by the light of the shaded lamp. He was glad to
get his son home again.

"Jeff," said he, "I've been lying here making up my mind I'd tell you."

Jeffrey rose and closed the door he had left open a crack out of
courtesy to the little watcher there. He came back to the bed, not with
a creaking caution, but like a man bringing a man's rude solace. He
could not believe his father was seriously undone. But, whatever was the
matter, the colonel was glad to talk. Perhaps, loyal as he was, even he
could scarcely estimate his own desire to turn from soft indulgences to
the hard contact of a man's intelligence.

"Jeff," said he, "I'm in a bad place. I've met the last enemy."

"Oh, no, you haven't," said Jeff, at random. "The last enemy is Death.
That's what they say, don't they? Well, you're years and years to the
good. Don't you worry."

"Ah, but the last enemy isn't Death," said the colonel wisely. "Don't
you think it. The last enemy is Fear. Death's only the executioner. Fear
delivers you over, and then Death has to take you, whether or no. But
Fear is the arch enemy."

Sane as he looked and spoke, this was rather impalpable, and Jeffrey
began to doubt his own fitness to deal with psychologic quibbles. But
his father gave short shrift for questioning.

"I'm afraid," he said quite simply.

"What are you afraid of?" Jeff felt he had to meet him with an equal
candour.