ithout knowing it,"
Deborah answered.

"Sounds a bit wild," murmured Roger. Again to his mind came the picture of
hordes of little Italians and Jews. "My dear, if I had _your children_ to
teach, I don't think I'd add a zoo," he said. And with a breath of
discomfort he turned back to his reading. He knew that he ought to question
her, to show an interest in her work. But he had a deep aversion for those
millions of foreign tenement people, always shoving, shoving upward through
the filth of their surroundings. They had already spoiled his neighborhood,
they had flowed up like an ocean tide. And so he read his paper, frowning
guiltily down at the page. He glanced up in a little while and saw Deborah
smiling across at him, reading his dislike of such talk. The smile which he
sent back at her was half apologetic, half an appeal for mercy. And Deborah
seemed to understand. She went into the living room, and there at the piano
she was soon playing softly. Listening from his study, again the feeling
came to him of her fresh and abundant vitality. He mused a little enviously
on how it must feel to be strong like that, never really tired.

And while her father thought in this wise, Deborah at the piano, leaning
back with eyes half closed, could feel her tortured nerves relax, could
feel her pulse stop throbbing so and the dull aching at her temples little
by little pass away. She played like this so many nights. Soon she would be
ready for sleep.

* * * * *

After she had gone to bed, Roger rose heavily from his chair. By long habit
he went about the house trying the windows and turning out lights. Last he
came to the front door. There were double outer doors with a ponderous
system of locks and bolts and a heavy chain. Mechanically he fastened them
all; and putting out the light in the hall, in the darkness he went up the
stairs. He could so easily feel his way. He put his hand lightly, first on
the foot of the banister, then on a curve in it halfway up, again on the
sharper curve at the top and last on the knob of his bedroom door. And it
was as though these guiding objects came out to meet him like old friends.

In his bedroom, while he slowly undressed, his glance was caught by the
picture upon the wall opposite his bed, a little landscape poster done in
restful tones of blue, of two herdsmen and their cattle far up on a
mountainside in the hour just before the dawn, tiny clear-cut silhouett