she met him in the dusk of the
candle-lighted room, little more than a child, he thought, as he noted
her round arms and neck within the film of her white dress. Esther did
not need to assume a pathos for the moment's needs. She was very sorry
for herself. They sat there by the windows, looking out under the shade
of the elms, and for a little neither spoke. Esther had some primitive
feminine impulses to put down. Alston had an extreme of pity that gave
him fervencies of his own. To Esther it was as natural as breathing to
ask a man to fight her battles for her, and to cling to him while she
told him what battles were to be fought. Alston had the chafed feeling
of one who cannot follow with an unmixed ardency the lines his heart
would lead him. He was always angry, chiefly because she had to suffer
so, after the hideousness of her undeserved destiny, and yet he saw no
way to help that might not make a greater hardship for her. At last she
spoke, using his name, and his heart leaped to it.

"Alston, what am I going to do?"

"Things going badly?" he asked her, in a voice moved enough to hearten
her. "What is it that's different?"

"Everything. Aunt Patricia has those horrible men come here and talk
with her--"

"It's ridiculous of her," said Alston, "but there's no harm in it.
They're not a bad lot, and she's an old lady, and she won't stay here
forever."

"Oh, yes, she will. She gets her food, at least, and I don't believe she
could pay for even that abroad. And this sort of thing amuses her. It's
like gipsies or circus people or something. It's horrible."

"What does your grandmother say?"

"Nothing."

"She must stand for it, in a way, or Madame Beattie couldn't do it."

"I don't believe grandmother understands fully. She's so old."

"She isn't tremendously old."

"Oh, but she looks so. When you see her in her nightcap--it's horrible,
the whole thing, grandmother and all, and here I am shut up with it."

"I'm sorry," said Alston, in a low tone. "I'm devilish sorry."

"And I want to go away," said Esther, her voice rising hysterically, so
that Alston nervously hoped she wouldn't cry. "But I can't do that. I
haven't enough to live on, away from here, and I'm afraid."

"Esther," said he, daring at last to bring out the doubt that assailed
him when he mused over her by himself, "just what do you mean by saying
you are afraid?"

"You know," said Esther, almost in a whisper. She had herself in hand
now.