ean that he was perfect, but that he
was kind--always. I know the quarrels he had--that he has still with the
people who won't go his way. The one thing he can't forgive in people is
that they never forget themselves, that they never think of anything
except what they want. That angers him, and he flies out. I know that.
But there's no use trying I can't make anybody, I can't make even you,
know all that he did for me--" The words ended in tears; and she sat
there, lost in memory, while the dim light seemed to absorb her white
dress and her pale features and the small hand that lay on the fringe of
her black sash.

"My dear, my dear," murmured Corinna because she could think of no words
that sounded less ineffectual.

There was a ring at the doorbell while she spoke and after a pause
which appeared to her interminable, she heard the shuffling tread of old
Abijah, and then the clear tone of Stephen's voice, followed immediately
by another speaker who sounded vaguely familiar, though she could not
recall now where she had listened to him before. It was not Julius
Gershom, she knew, though it might be some man that she had heard at a
meeting.

"Let me speak to Mrs. Page first," said Stephen. "Ask her if she will
come into the drawing-room."

For an instant Corinna hung back, with the chill of dread at her heart;
and in that instant Patty flew past her like a startled spirit, while
the ends of her black sash streamed behind her. With the penetrating
insight of love the girl had surmised, had seen, had understood, before
a word of explanation had reached her, before even the door had swung
open, and she had met the blanched faces of the men in the hall. "It is
Father," she said quietly. "They have hurt him. Oh, I knew all the time
that they were going to hurt him!"

Corinna, standing close at her side without touching her, for some
intuition told her that the girl did not wish any support, was aware of
the faces of these men, flickering slowly, like glimmering ashen lights,
out of the shadows in the hall--first Stephen's face, with its shocked
compassionate eyes; then the face of old Darrow, rock-hewn, relentless;
then the face of her father, which even tragedy could not startle out of
its ceremonious reserve; and beyond these familiar faces, it seemed to
her that the collective face of the crowd gazed back at her with an
expression which was one neither of surprise nor terror, but of the
stony fortitude of the ages. B