to shy at them, and then
finally to jib. It was no longer a reasonable creature that they were
getting upstairs, but an incalculable and mysterious beast. They lifted
him on to the landing, and he stood on the landing as if in his sleep.
Both Edwin and Albert were breathless. This was the man who since the
beginning of his illness had often walked to Hillport and back! It was
incredible that he had ever walked to Hillport and back. He passed more
easily along the landing. And then he was in his bedroom.

"Father going to bed?" Maggie called out from below.

"Yes," said Albert. "We've just been getting him upstairs."

"Oh! That's right," Maggie said cheerfully. "I thought he was looking
very tired to-night."

"He gave us a doing," said the breathless Albert in a low voice at the
door of the bedroom, smiling, and glancing at his cigarette to see if it
was still alight.

"He does it on purpose, you know," Edwin whispered casually. "I'll just
get him to bed, and then I'll be down."

Albert went, with a `good night' to Darius that received no answer.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TWO.

In the bedroom, Darius had sunk on to the cushioned ottoman. Edwin shut
the door.

"Now then!" said Edwin encouragingly, yet commandingly. "I can tell you
one thing--you aren't losing weight." He had recovered from his
annoyance, but he was not disposed to submit to any trifling. For many
months now he had helped Darius to dress, when he came up from the shop
for breakfast, and to undress in the evening. It was not that his
father lacked the strength, but he would somehow lose himself in the
maze of his garments, and apparently he could never remember the proper
order of doffing or donning them. Sometimes he would ask, "Am I
dressing or undressing?" And he would be capable of so involving
himself in a shirt, if Edwin were not there to direct, that much
patience was needed for his extrication. His misapprehensions and
mistakes frequently reached the grotesque. As habit threw them more and
more intimately together, the trusting dependence of Darius on Edwin
increased. At morning and evening the expression of that intensely
mournful visage seemed to be saying as its gaze met Edwin's, "Here is
the one clear-sighted, powerful being who can guide me through this
complex and frightful problem of my clothes." A suit, for Darius, had
become as intricate as a quadratic equati