beaten away.
The thought was bitter. She stared with thin lips at the happy gleaming
tides until it struck her suddenly that love had come back into her
house. It was here now, attending on the red-haired girl, and it would
not be beaten off; it would be cherished, it would be given sacrifices.
Surely if it could have made beautiful her own life, which without it
had been so hideous, it could exorcise Richard's destiny. She fixed her
eyes on the high moon and said as if in prayer, "Ellen.... Ellen...."

There sounded, in the recesses of the house, the ping of an electric
bell.

She looked at the clock by her bedside. It was three o'clock. She said
to herself, with that air of irony which people to whom many strange
things have happened assume when they fear that yet another is
approaching, so that they shall not flatter Fate by their perturbation,
"It's late for anyone to call."

But the ping sounded again; and then the thud of blows upon the door.

She cried out, "Ah, yes!" She knew who it was. It was Roger, come in
rags, come in an idiot hope of escaping justice, after some fatuous and
squalid crime, to destroy Richard and herself. She hurried over to her
wardrobe and drew out her warm dressing-gown and thrust her feet into
slippers, while her lips practised saying lovingly, "Roger, Roger,
Roger! ... Why, it's you, Roger!... Come in. Come in, my boy.... What is
it, my poor lad?..."

She went down through the quiet house and laid her fingers on the handle
of the door; delayed for a moment, and raised her hand to her face and
smoothed from it certain lines of loathing. Bowing her head, she
murmured a remonstrance to some power.

But when she opened the door it was Richard who stood there.

CHAPTER VII

He could not at once discern in the darkness who it was that opened the
door, and he remained an aloof black shape against the moon-glare,
lifting his cap and saying, "I am sorry to knock you up at this hour,"
so for a minute Marion had the amusing joy of seeing him as he appeared
to other people, remote and vigilant and courteous and really more
hidalgoesque than the occasion demanded. She laughed teasingly. The hard
line of him softened, and he said, "Mother," and stepped over the
threshold and folded her in his arms, and kissed her on the lips and
hair. She rested quietly within his groping, pressing love. This indoor
darkness where they stood was striped with many lines of moonlight
coming through cr