--another trip to Atlanta with old
Roly-poly and some more. Aunt Jane was sick, but she dressed and went,
all the same. I came over to cook your breakfast, wash the dishes, and
do up the house. Why shouldn't I? There is nothing to do at home."

He said nothing, but as he turned away a faint sense of gratitude seemed
to enter the aching void within him. A little later she called him to
the dining-room. He had eaten no supper the night before, and his
physical being demanded nourishment. He sat down and the child waited on
him. The coffee was good and bracing, the eggs and steak were prepared
to his taste, the toast brown and crisp.

Somehow he now regarded Dora with pity. How frail, wan, and anemic she
looked! How thin and bloodless her hands and cheeks! She had the making
of a good woman in her, but she, too, was losing her chance. How sad!
How pitiful!

"You work too hard," he suddenly said, and he wondered if that touch of
refined consideration for another had come from his contact with his
wife. "You are too little and young. Sit down yourself and eat."

She shrugged her peaked shoulders and laughed. "I'm not hungry. I'm not
a bit hungry here lately. The only thing I care for is syrup and bread,
and they say too much of that as a regular diet will get you down in the
long run."

He stared, his impulse toward her betterment oozing out of him. The
whistles of the factories reminded him that he was not to work that
day--that he was not to return at dark to Tilly, as had been his wont,
and he rose and went back to the bedroom. What was to take place? Why,
the day would drag by and Cavanaugh would return with some verdict or
other--some report that would settle his fate forever.

Leaving Dora at work in the kitchen, he went outside. Desiring not to
meet any one, he made his way to the nearest wooded hillside beyond his
mother's house and the bleak, white-capped cemetery. From that coign of
vantage he saw the town stretched out beneath him. He found a great
moss-grown boulder and half lay, half sat on it. The sun climbed higher
and higher; the din of the town and its industries beat in his ears, the
buzz of a planing-mill, the clang of hammered iron. He ought not to
have attempted to pass that particular day in absolute solitude and
inactivity, but he knew naught of his own psychology. He watched for the
coming and going of trains, telling himself again and again that
Cavanaugh's return would decide his fate forever.