dow, but she could not turn her face toward
him, could not address her words directly to him. "You always asked
for him, you know. You thought that when he came he would be as he
used to be before you were sick. Mother wants him to be like that
too--for your sake."

Her voice came from so deep down in her chest that the man had to
force himself to control his rage. He thought: "She is speaking so
sweetly so as to deceive me. They planned that when he was here." And
the soft tones in which she continued only caused his anger to swell
more wrathfully.

"And you won't go to Heaven yet, will you Annie? You're such a good
little girl and you'll stay with father and mother. If only--you
mustn't be afraid of father, you silly little Annie, because he speaks
so loud. He doesn't mean to be cross."

She stopped; she expected an answer from the father, not from the
child. She expected that he would come to the bed and speak to the
child as she had done, and through the child with her. Whatever she
might think of him, the child was his child, after all, and it was
ill.

The man remained silent and sat on quietly in his chair. For the
length of time that it takes to say half the Lord's Prayer there was
no sound but the ticking of the clock; and that grew faster and faster
like the beating of a human heart that feels misfortune approaching.
The flame of the light flickered as with fear.

Valentine rose from his chair to attend to the light.

There was a sound of wheezing in the child's chest; she wanted to
speak and could not. She wanted to stretch out her hands toward her
father, and she could not. She could do nothing but hold out the arms
of her soul to her father. But her father's soul did not see the
beseeching arms; it held its wrath convulsively in its hands and had
no hand free for the child. Valentine stepped away from the light and
went out to give vent to his feelings in tears. The man rose and
approached his wife softly without her noticing him. He wanted to
surprise her, and he succeeded. She started, frightened, as she
suddenly saw facing her across the bed a distorted human countenance.
She started, and he said through his teeth: "You are frightened? Do
you know why?"

She meant to tell him herself that Apollonius had been there, but she
had not yet had an opportunity; she did not dare to do so at the sick
child's bedside, because she knew that he would fly into a rage;
whenever she could she had spared the c