IT was midnight when Charles Tolliver returned alone. Without removing his coat or the carefully bound muffler, he made his way through the house to the back stairs which he climbed slowly and with an air of sheepishness. His wife was, after all, no easy woman to face under conditions like this. The news he had for her was not the best. Indeed it is probable that he experienced a great relief when he found that his wife was not alone. In the dusty room thrown now into a wild disorder which Mrs. Tolliver was already vigorously engaged in clearing away, the doctor stood beside the bed. There was a quality of the grotesque in the battered figure of the old man and the fantastic shadow of the physician cast by the flickering light upon the wall. At the sound of his footsteps Mrs. Tolliver, still holding in her arms volumes three and four of the Decline and Fall, looked up from her task. She stared hard at him as if by concentration she might produce out of thin air the figure of her daughter. But there was no mistake. He was alone.
It was Charles Tolliver who spoke first. He found no pleasure in airing his troubles in public, so he said nothing of his errand. "What's the matter with Gramp?"
The doctor faced him. He was a short fat man with little mutton chop whiskers. "It seems he's had a stroke," he murmured. "And yet I don't know. It might be something else. The symptoms aren't right." And he took up once more the bony wrist, to count the pulse. Instantly Mrs. Tolliver stepped close to her husband.
"Did you find her?" she asked in a low voice.
"No. . . . The train was pulling out just as I reached the station. I was a minute too late."
"It was Gramp who let her get away. If you hadn't stayed to argue. You could have hurried. My God, who knows what will happen to her. . . . My little girl!"
"She isn't that. . . . Not any longer."
