't take my word for it.
Then, if you still want to sleep on your wrongs, it's your own affair."

XXXII

WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT

If Thomas Gordon, opening his eyes to consciousness on the mid-week
morning, felt the surprise which might naturally grow out of the sight
of Ardea sitting in a low rocker at his bedside, he did not evince it,
possibly because there were other and more perplexing things for the
tired brain to grapple with first.

For the moment he did not stir or try to speak. There was a long dream
somewhere in the past in which he had been lost in the darkness,
stumbling and groping and calling for her to come and lead him out to
life and light. It must have been a dream, he argued, and perhaps this
was only a continuation of it. Yet, no; she was there in visible
presence, bending over a tiny embroidery frame; and they were alone
together.

"Ardea!" he said tremulously.

She looked up, and her eyes were like cooling well-springs to quench the
fever fires in his.

"You are better," she said, rising. "I'll go and call your mother."

"Wait a minute," he pleaded; then his hand found the bandage on his
head. "What happened to me?"

"Don't you remember? Two men tried to rob you last Saturday evening as
you were coming home. One of them struck you."

"Saturday? And this is--"

"This is Wednesday."

The cool preciseness of her replies cut him to the heart. He did not
need to ask why she had come. It was mere neighborliness, and not for
him, but for his mother. He remembered the Saturday evening quite
clearly now: Japheth's shout; the two men springing on him; the instant
just preceding the crash of the blow when he had recognized one of his
assailants and guessed the identity of the other.

"It was no more than right that you should come," he said bitterly. "It
was the least you could do, since your--"

She was moving toward the door, and his ungrateful outburst had the
effect of stopping her. But she did not go back to him.

"I owe your mother anything she likes to ask," she affirmed, in the same
colorless tone.

"And you owe me nothing at all, you would say. I might controvert that.
But no matter; we have passed the Saturday and have come to the
Wednesday. Where is Norman? Hasn't he been here?"

"He has been with you almost constantly from the first. He was here less
than an hour ago."

"Where is he now?"

She hesitated. "There is urgency of some kind in your business affairs.
Your f