Philip's convalescence was a period of enforced companionship between the two. Mr. De Jarnette had to wait the lifting of the quarantine before he could go back to the city. Even the court had to wait for the quarantine. The case would have come on before this had it not been for postponement on account of it. Nobody had defied it but John Harcourt. He had done so twice. The first time Richard received him and took his message to Margaret, watching her closely as she read it.

"Mr. Harcourt?... Oh, yes, I think I will go down—if he isn't afraid. I want to see him."

He heard Harcourt say a moment later, "Oh, hang your quarantine, Margaret! I had to come!"

Margaret! It had come to that. The next time Mr. Harcourt came the master of the house sent a servant for Margaret and walked in the garden while the visitor was there.

If Richard and Margaret had been companions in sorrow they certainly were now in joy. His relief that his negligence had not been visited with the punishment it deserved made him another man than the one she had known. As to the girl,—she was bubbling over with gladness. She even jested with him, calling him "Unker Wichard" once, then blushing at the familiarity, and taking herself to task for it afterwards. But after all, she told herself in impatient protest, they had fought for him side by side—why should they not, for a few short hours at least, rejoice together. He was her foeman still, but the sick-room and its revelations forbade that he should ever seem her bitter enemy again. She would not permit herself to think of the case at issue between them. Philip would live. That was enough now. Let to-morrow and its complications take care of to-morrow. She could not be less than grateful to him for his tenderness to Philip. How sweet the apple blossoms were! And the lilacs!—the bushes that Richard's mother planted, grown to great trees now. How they filled the air with their fragrance. It was a beautiful world! Oh, a beautiful world!

A reaction came, of course. As time passed, a depression—natural enough perhaps—followed the jubilance of those first days. A growing unrest possessed her. She was not quite easy about Philip, though he seemed to be getting well. The doctor came only every other day now—or had until the last few days again. Philip had taken a fancy—just a child's passing fancy, of course—to go into the next room which was cool and dark, and opened into his. She came upon Dr. Anderson one day lifting his eyelids. The next day he brought a friend out with him. She need not be alarmed, he told her. The case had been rather an unusual one and he had spoken to Dr. Hawes about it. That was all. But he asked Margaret to leave them to themselves for a while, which seemed strange to her.

She went down that day to the back porch where Mammy Cely was ironing, and dropped down on the old stone step. It was not Philip alone that troubled her this morning. The situation was pressing upon her more and more each day. How would it all end? and when? It would soon be time for the quarantine to be lifted. And then—She wished sometimes that when the case came up she could go into it with all her old hatred of Richard De Jarnette hot within her. But she knew in her inmost soul that she never could. Sometimes it rose tempestuously as of old, and sometimes it died away as a wind dies, leaving a becalmed ship upon a lifeless sea. What was the matter with her any way? she asked herself angrily. What had got into her that she could not control her moods?... And why should Richard De Jarnette make it all so much harder for her by being first one thing and then another? He was a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!

"Mammy Cely," she said suddenly, in pursuance of this thought, "sometimes it seems to me that we are all of us two persons—one evil and the other good. Sometimes one is on top and sometimes the other. I get tired of the fight."

"That's so, honey!" said Mammy Cely, never pausing in her work, "that's jes' the way it is. Ef you was standin' in the pulpit you couldn't 'spound that doctrine any better 'n what you have. Humph! don't I know! The good Cely been fightin' 'g'inst the bad Cely in me for forty years, chile, an' all on account er that nigger-trader. I been prayin' fur that man ever sence I got religion. Yaas 'm! I had to to git thoo! That's what you has to do—pray fur yo' enemies.

"And now when we're havin' a big meetin' and they all gits to shoutin' and clappin' their hands, and weavin' around, and singin'

seems lak I git so happy, and see my Savior so plain that I jes' calls out, 'Lord, save that man!' (I know the Lord gwineter know who I mean 'thout me callin' any names.)

"And at that here leaps up that ole black Cely in me (that ole sw'arin', cussin' Cely) and says, 'Yaas, Lord! save him at the last, but shake him over hell fur a while, and swinge him jes' a little bit!'... Then I know I got to git down on my knees and go at it ag'in! Yaas 'm, that's the way we has to fight!"

A few days after this Margaret was sitting at the window in Philip's room late in the afternoon. The quarantine had been raised and Richard had gone to town that day for the first time. Somehow it had been a trying day. Philip had been restless without him. She had been telling him a story, but it had not been a very satisfactory one—Philip had had to make frequent suggestions and amendments, for she was absent-minded and not in her best story-telling vein.

Her eyes wandered down the long avenue of elms that had given the place its name. What monarchs they were! Well might they be called the kings of the tree-world. They led clear down to the gate—the big gate that Philip had been so proud to open for his uncle. How jealous she had been over that,—and how foolishly. One could hardly see the gate from this window. She leaned further out. Yes, there was the gate, and—

"Mama," said Philip, "are you looking for Unker Wichard?"

"No!" she said with a sharpness most unusual. "I am looking at the elms."

"Ain't it most time for Unker Wichard to come?" asked Philip, querulously. He at least had missed him.

His mother did not answer, except to say as Mammy Cely came in with some newly hatched chickens to show him, "I'll run down and get you some lilacs, dearie."

In the garden, laid out after the fashion of a half century ago, were the lilac trees, white and purple, now in their glory. The garden, kept immaculate by Uncle Tobe's unremitting care, was as Richard De Jarnette's mother had left it, with beds of old-fashioned flowers edged with box. At the further end of it was an arbor covered not with grapes, but with a luxuriance of wistaria, the long clusters of which hung down through the trellised roof. The old wistaria, too, was a tree, gnarled and twisted. It had broken down several arbors, Mammy Cely said, but Richard would not have it destroyed.

Margaret sat on the seat under the wistaria. She had torn off the lilacs ruthlessly and had her hot face buried in their cool depths. On the way hither she had seen a horseman cantering up the avenue. She would stay here until he had left Philip's room and gone downstairs. She did not wish to see him. She would be glad if she could never see him again. There had been a truce between them—yes, of course there had to be while Philip was so ill—but that was over now. He was her enemy after all—must always be—no matter which way the thing was settled. It was best that she should see as little of him as possible. Of course she would have to remain here as long as Philip needed her—her heart stood still at the thought of what would happen when he did not need her—but she would manage it so as to be away when he was in Philip's room. That would be better—far better.

Then looking up she saw the man she was planning to avoid coming down the walk toward her.

"I am looking for you," he said, baring his head, sprinkled with gray, to the soft spring air. "Philip said you were among the lilacs."

She pointed to the fragrant mass in her lap, glad of their confirmation.

"How has he been?"

"Better—I think. Yes—I am sure he is better."

He sat down beside her. "That sounds as if you were keeping something back. What is it?"

His voice was so kind that foolish tears got into her voice.

"I feel as if something were being kept back from me," she said passionately. "That is just what the trouble is. It—it seems silly in me to go to you with every little thing—but—I have no one here—"

"I don't want you to feel that anything which concerns Philip is too little or too great to come to me with," he said, gravely. "Remember always that my interest in him is second only to your own. Now—what is it?"

"Well, if Philip is getting along so well—and he certainly seems to be—why should Dr. Anderson bring other doctors out here to see him?"

"Other doctors?" he repeated, with a startled look. "What do you mean?"

"I told you about the one who was here a few days ago.

"Yes. I think you said Dr. Anderson told you there were some features about the case that made it an unusual one, and that he brought the doctor out to see him for that reason."

"He did. But to-day he brought out another one—somebody from Johns Hopkins, I think they said—and when I had made up my mind to stay in the room this time, Dr. Anderson sent me off on some fool's errand—to get something that I know he didn't want—and when I got back whatever they wanted to do was done. But just as I got into the room I heard this man say, 'So long as it affects only the outer circumference of'—something, I could not catch that—'there is little to fear, but if—' and then he saw me and stopped."

He did not make light of her fears. He met them with sober sense.

"I shouldn't worry over this, I think. You know that Dr. Anderson can be trusted. If there is anything you need to know he will tell you. Besides, you are not even sure that they were talking about Philip. There is nothing alarming about a physician's taking a brother practitioner to see a case.... What time will the doctor be here to-morrow? I may wait and see him myself. Now don't worry over it any more."

How easy it is to learn to rely on one stronger than ourselves. Margaret went back to the house strengthened and helped. Richard De Jarnette had calmed her fears as he would have quieted Philip. She felt almost humiliated that he should have such power, but she was comforted.

After that talk in the arbor it did not seem quite practicable to put into effect her determination to absent herself when he was in Philip's room. In fact, that very night they sat before the open fire which was kindled as night fell, she with Philip in her arms, and he in his arm-chair across from her, and though there was not much conversation between them, there was companionship in his presence.... Their mutual interest in Philip was a bond between them now that she was so isolated from her friends.... He had been very gentle to her in the arbor.

"Mama, sing to me," said Philip. And Margaret sang softly the cradle songs he loved. They made a sweet picture as they sat thus. But in the midst of her songs Richard got up abruptly and went into the other room, drawing a great breath when he got there.

The nurse had been reading here, but had gone down-stairs. He stood a moment looking around the room. It was strangely decorated, if decoration it could be called. On the walls were Madonna pictures of every name and age. In his present mood it moved him strangely to see them. It seemed as if in her desperate fear of being supplanted she had tried to keep always before Philip the close and tender bond between mother and child. Nothing else could explain all these pictures. His eyes went from one to another, pausing longest before that one of modern times which has been called the "Madonna of the Slums." That seemed to him the truest of them all and to have the most pathos. Here was no Virgin of the Immaculate Conception upheld by a knowledge of her mission,—only the human mother bearing on her arm, divinely strong, the sleeping child. He wanted to take it from her and rest her arm,—her tired arm. There was no halo here,—nothing but the shawl, the insignia of the lowly, about the patient face. He recalled something he had read once about how in the "elder days of art" the masters painted a nimbus round the mother's head, leaving her face often inane and weak; but how later, with a deeper insight if not a subtler skill, he put the halo in the face.

As he looked at the pictures with this thought in his mind, his eye fell on the photograph of Margaret and Philip on the mantel.... He took it up and looked at it.... Yes, the halo was there as surely as in the face of Virgin mother.... They all had it. He turned the picture to the wall with a quick frown. This was brave preparation he was making for the trial which would soon be on now. As he turned the face from him the words italicized stood out from the printed slip:

"One scrap alone I hold of all that once was mine."

He pushed the picture under a book and went out of the room.

Dr. Anderson did not come out till afternoon, but when he did the Baltimore man was with him. They went almost directly to the sick-room. "Let me have the nurse, please, this time," the doctor said, and Margaret, frightened and half indignant, was left outside with Richard.

When the consultation was at an end, the Baltimore man would not sit down, excusing his haste on the ground that he must catch a train.

Mr. De Jarnette followed him into the hall.

"Doctor—"

"Can't stop," said the doctor, curtly. "Dr. Anderson will say to the mother all that needs to be said." Plainly he did not recognize Mr. De Jarnette's rights in the case.

"Dr. Anderson," Margaret was saying when he stepped back into the room, "what is it? I must know."

For a moment the doctor did not reply. When he did it was not in answer to her question.

"Mrs. De Jarnette, will you sit down?"

She dropped into the proffered chair. There was something in his voice that took her strength.

"Mr. De Jarnette, will you too be seated? I have something of—of—importance—to communicate, and it should be said to both."

Richard De Jarnette was leaning on the mantel. He did not change his position.

"Go on," he said, briefly.

The doctor gave a slight shrug and turned his back upon him.

"My child," he said very gently, "I want to talk with you about the nature of this disease. We are not so much afraid of scarletina, or scarlet fever as you call it, as we used to be. We know better how to manage it."

"Yes," murmured Margaret, not knowing to what all this tended, "he really seems to be recovering more quickly than I had even hoped—but—"

"Ye—es, ye—es," continued the doctor, making carefully spaced lines on a scrap of paper and avoiding her eye. "You see it is not the disease that we are most afraid of—that is generally easy enough—it yields to treatment—but—it is—the complications that sometimes arise,—the after effects."

He was looking into her face now, and she grew white to the lips.

"Doctor!—"

"Yes," with a slight shake of the head, "it is the after effects. I have known, many children to be left with permanent ear or eye trouble from scarlet fever. Possibly the danger may be averted—we can never tell at first—but—"

"Mama!"

Margaret stepped hastily into the next room. In her heart which had divined the truth she was thankful for a reprieve.

"What do you mean?" asked Richard De Jarnette, harshly, driven by a great fear. "Why do you torture her so? Say plainly what you mean."

The outraged physician turned upon him savagely.

"I mean, sir," he said with some stiffness, "that this lady's child, who has unfortunately been allowed to contract scarlet fever, is in great danger of going blind. Do I make myself plain?"

His voice was low, but so intense in its indignation that it penetrated to the room beyond.

Richard De Jarnette staggered back as from a blow.

"Blind!... Good God!"

He turned abjectly toward the doorway between the two rooms where stood Margaret, white as death but with face transfigured. This was her opportunity.... And what would Philip do without her if—With a swift movement she fell on her knees at his feet and stretched out her hands.

"Richard! oh, Richard!" she cried, her heart in her eyes. "Will you give him to me if he is blind?"

The old doctor turned to the window with a groan.

And Richard De Jarnette—

Have you ever stood before a monarch of the forest marked for the woodman's ax? Have you noted its majestic spread, its trunk of massive girth, its towering branches where

Have you stood thus and marveled not that so magnificent a thing could fall by hand of puny man? And have you further noted how it stood at last—majestic still, but with its strength so sapped, and its potentiality so meshed that any child might cause its overthrow?

For weeks the mighty oak of this man's pride and obstinacy had been preparing for its fall. Weak hands they were which had given the blows—a woman's and a child's; no one suspected that its strength was gone, he least of all; but when the crucial moment came, it needed but a baby's groping touch to lay it low.

He took her hands and raised her to her feet.

"Margaret!... Margaret!" he said brokenly. "From this hour—come what may—the child is yours."

The door closed behind him and the sound of his heavy tread echoed through the hall,—but she did not hear. The old doctor wiped his eyes, looked cautiously around, and stole from the room,—but she did not perceive.

She was on her knees beside her child, sobbing as though her heart would break.