Saturday noon Lewis came near having a scene with his secretary, when he insisted that, for once, she must take the half holiday. “No, you cannot have the next chapter.” He felt rather like an ugly dog barking up at her, with his paws on a bone—the bone his manuscript. “I’ve got to keep it to revise. I fumbled it terribly last night. Couldn’t seem to concentrate. You get along out to some beach or other. Lie in the sun. You’re white as a daisy. Good-by and thanks.”

There had been strife; but Lewis, continuing to ape the behavior of a dog with his bone, and doing it rather successfully, had finally won and Miss Frazier went for her hat and bag. But she came back in a second to explain, “Petra is staying to practice typing. Won’t it disturb you if you’re working here? Mr. Wilder is coming for her at four. She wants to wait for him.”

“What! Again?” But Lewis pulled himself up. He said in answer to her question, “I don’t think it’ll disturb me. That door is very nearly soundproof.”

“I want to tell you that she is broken-hearted about yesterday, Doctor. She can’t get over it. Nothing like that will ever happen again, I know. She’s awfully silly in some ways but she’s—she’s all right. Really she is.”

“Yes, I know she is.” But Lewis looked up with quick gratitude at his secretary. She was rather all right herself, he was thinking. He smiled at her. It was a more human, a more personal smile than she had ever had from her employer before. She smiled, dimly, back. She was silly herself, a thousand times sillier than Petra. If Doctor Pryne saw that she was fighting tears, he would think she had gone out of her head. She turned quickly away.

In the reception office Janet said to Petra, “The door’s soundproof. Doctor Pryne mightn’t even know you are staying if I hadn’t told him. But it’s a long time till four. Don’t work too hard. I’ll meet you Sunday at twelve.”

Petra answered, her hands suspended over the typewriter keys, “I love it, Janet. I love typing. You’re going to be proud of me some day. I’ll be as good a secretary as you are. To-morrow at noon, yes. How nice it will be!”

That was at two. At three-thirty Lewis put the manuscript chapter into his brief-case and got up, stretching. He lit a cigarette, turned to the window and stood looking out for a minute. Then he took a few quick paces back and forth between the windows and the reception-office door. Then he pushed the patients’ easy chair from its usual position till its back was at the window for whatever breeze there was. Dick was coming for Petra at four. Lewis himself expected McCloud at the same time. Well, this was only half-past three. He opened the door into his reception office.

Petra was working at shorthand now, her typewriter covered up until Monday. One hand was in her curls, ruffling them, and she appeared to be eating the rubber end of her pencil. She looked at Lewis dazedly. She was white with the heat in the stuffy little room. The doors should all have been opened—or else she shouldn’t have stayed. It was not quite so warm as yesterday, but it was bad enough.

“There’s a breeze in my office,” Lewis said. “A baby one, but rather nice. Put away the lessons, do, and come along in. I’m going to lay off too—till four.”

The violet of her frock was cool against the dark leather of the patients’ chair. Why did she wear a yellow belt? Her thin stockings were yellow, gold-yellow. Yellow and violet, with her gentian eyes, and vital gold-brown curls brushed on her neck, back from her ears, made Petra too lovely to look at with a level gaze. Why shouldn’t Petra care hugely about clothes and spend all the dollars a year on them she could lay her hands on—if clothes did this! The yellow belt was magic—a narrow yellow magic made of nothing in the world but a silly, twisted bit of silk cord.

Hundreds of women had sat in that chair facing Lewis, for years past, and at no other time could he recall noticing what one of them had worn. But he could no more help noticing this violet, cool frock of Petra’s with the yellow belt than he could help noticing the texture of flowers near at hand. The loveliness of Petra’s frocks was as inescapable as the loveliness of flowers.

He offered her a cigarette. She took one but only, he felt, because she did not see what they were going to talk about and this was something to relieve the awkwardness.... This time, when he held the match for her, their eyes did not meet....

Lewis put his arm along his desk. First of all, he had a duty to perform. He should have done it yesterday had he not taken it for granted it was unnecessary. But in the middle of the night he had been bothered by that taking for granted. Now was the time to get it off his mind,—and pray heaven it was not too late.

“You’re not to mind what I’m going to say, Petra. Probably it’s totally unnecessary. But you will give me your promise now, won’t you, quite solemnly, never so long as you live, to tell any one—any one at all—anything that you learned about my patient McCloud yesterday. You haven’t mentioned any of it to a soul, have you?”

Petra looked at him. No faltering now. Truth was on the way. She said almost before he had finished, “No, of course I haven’t told a soul and of course I promise. I do understand and you can trust me.” But even as she finished, panic came. She put her hand to her mouth. She had remembered something. Lewis saw her remember.

His heart sank. This was too bad—too terribly too bad. He exclaimed, “You have told some one, Petra. Who? In God’s name!”

“No,—no, I haven’t—” But she stopped the lie. She couldn’t lie to this man. In the first place, he could spot it. In the second place, she did not want to, somehow. She said, miserably, “I told Teresa. I told her every word. I’d forgotten. But that doesn’t count as telling. It’s like telling one’s self. She is so safe.... I told her that McCloud was Edyth’s husband. She had known her in Cambridge. And all about the flying accident. I told her that. And his mother’s dying. I told her, too, how McCloud had only seen his baby at the hospital. Less than two weeks. That seemed so unjust—so cruel! Oh, yes, I guess I told Teresa everything. You see—You see, I thought she might help.”

“Petra! You are terrible!” Lewis groaned. “You’re impossible!”

But Petra seemed not to mind his consternation. She was looking past Lewis’ head, a question in her eyes. Lewis swung around and there was Neil McCloud himself, standing midway in the room—his expression murderous.

McCloud was early for his appointment and had expected to be kept waiting until four at least. But when he found the reception room deserted and the doctor’s door wide open, he naturally came to it. It had taken him some seconds to take it in—what was going on here—that the man he had entrusted with his confidences as implicitly as if he had been a priest in the confessional was using those confidences as a peg on which to hang a flirtation with a beautiful new secretary. They sat here in the place where he had written it all, hashing it over together. Telling his secrets.... As Edyth had hashed over things with her father, old man Dayton, telling his secrets.... Terrible secrets....

For in this moment he remembered what Pryne had so long wanted him to remember! Pryne had questioned and questioned. Coaxed at his strangely blank memory. And nothing doing. But now it was here. Clear, bright as a lightning flash. Now, when remembering was no good to anybody! What the old man had said, over the telephone, when McCloud had called him up that night to ask him what he had done with Edyth and their son, was this:

“Edyth has told me everything. You killed your brother. You broke your mother’s heart. But you shan’t break my daughter’s heart and ruin my grandson’s life. I have the power to protect my own. There isn’t anything you can say. Don’t say a word.”

And you had been obedient. You had gone dumb from that minute. In obedience to Edyth’s father, who knew that you had killed your brother and broken your mother’s heart. Edyth had told him all that. Told the old man. All the things you had told her before you would marry her, in sacred confidence. And now the old man was shouting at you through the telephone. It was as if no time had passed since. As if you were hearing it this minute, while you stood frozenly staring at Pryne and his stenographer: “There isn’t anything you can say. Don’t say a word.”

Let the old brute shout! Keep on shouting through your brain! You don’t mind it now. At least this one thing about you, Pryne shouldn’t ever possess. One little bit he wouldn’t tell his beautiful stenographer—simply because he wouldn’t ever know it. And now you’d get out,—right out into the darkness which had been compassing you ever since the moment the kid went out in your arms.

Pryne was getting up. The girl was up too. Why didn’t your hate and scorn blast them where they stood? It was strong enough to do that. But hate failing, there was the revolver. No! Shut up. Don’t think of that. The kid—Mother—those were lives enough for you to have destroyed. Two—three steps, and you would follow those beloveds into the dark void. You should have followed before. But instead you had come whining for help to this—fashionable psychiatrist. Hell! Your teeth were clenched with the will it took not to put your hand to the pocket holding the revolver. It was essential that you should be outside the door, that it should be between you and them, or Pryne might somehow manage to spoil it. The doctor had a look in his eyes—as if he suspected or even knew your intention. But you weren’t even touching your pocket. Your hands were at your sides. Straight down. How could Pryne know what you were going to do?

Well, Pryne wouldn’t move, wouldn’t interfere, you were sure of it, as long as you kept your eyes steady and your hands at your sides. You started backing toward the door, holding the skunk where he was with your scorn of him, and his girl beside him there, wide-eyed and scared. She was a damned beauty. You had been right when you told her so. You would back through the door. They should not stir. Then you would close it with one lightning motion. But you must remember to use the left hand. The right must be kept for the business of shooting your brains out before either of them could stir. It would be a neat job. That was one thing they should never hash over together,—your attempted suicide. Attempted! Like hell, attempted! You’d have one clean mark for that, so help you Christ.

At that moment McCloud’s seeking heel felt the rise of the doorsill, the rim of the dark void.