kept
ringing. Women in motors from uptown and humbler visitors young and old
kept coming to make inquiries. More gifts were brought and flowers. And
Roger saw these people, and as he answered their questions he fairly
scowled in their faces--unconsciously, for his mind was not clear.
Reporters came. Barely an hour passed without bringing a man or a woman
from some one of the papers. He gave them only brief replies. Why couldn't
they leave his house alone? He saw her name in headlines: "Deborah Gale at
Point of Death." And he turned angrily away. Vividly, on the second night,
there came to him a picture of Deborah's birth so long ago in this same
house. How safe it had been, how different, how secluded and shut in. No
world had clamored _then_ for news. And so vivid did this picture grow,
that when at last there came to his ears the shrill clear cry of a new
life, it was some time before he could be sure whether this were not still
his dream of that other night so long ago.

But now a nurse had led him upstairs, and he stood by a cradle looking down
at a small wrinkled face almost wholly concealed by a soft woolly blanket.
And presently Allan behind him said,

"It's a boy, and he's to be named after you." Roger looked up.

"How's the mother?" he asked.

"Almost out of danger," was the reply. Then Roger glanced at Allan's face
and saw how drawn and gray it was. He drew a long breath and turned back to
the child. Allan had gone and so had the nurse, and he was alone by the
cradle. Relief and peace and happiness stole into his spirit. He felt the
deep remoteness of this strange new little creature from all the clamoring
world without--which he himself was soon to leave. The thought grew
clearer, clearer, as with a curious steady smile Roger stood there looking
down.

"Well, little brother, you're here, thank God. And nobody knows how close
we'll be--for a little while," he thought. "For we're almost out of the
world, you and I."

* * * * *

Days passed, Deborah's strength increased, and soon they let Roger come
into the room. She, too, was remote from the world for a time. That great
family outside was anxious no longer, it left her alone. But soon it would
demand her. Never again, he told himself, would she be so close, so
intimate, as here in her bed with this child of hers to whom she had given
her father's name. "These hours are my real good-byes."

Two long quiet weeks of this h