"Such parfect nonsense! You ought to be thanksgiving. Who broke that vase to smithereens?" "I did." "It cost twenty guineas." "I don't care a tinker's curse, if it cost a hundred guineas." He walked to the mantlepiece and flung down on the marble hearth a valuable piece of Worcester. "My God, Robert! Have you lost your senses?" "I have lost my wife and child." "Good riddance of baith o' them." "How dare you?" "Dinna say 'dare' to me." "Go away! Go instanter!" "You will go first. I'll not leave you alane." "If you don't go, I will call McNab and Jepson, and they will help you to your own room. Do you hear me?" "Robert Campbell, go to your decent bed and sleep, and behave yourself." "My God, woman!" "I am your mother." "God pity me! I can't throw you down, but----" then he lifted a white marble clock, and let it crash among the broken china. "Out of here!" he screamed. His usually deep, strong voice had been rising with every word he spoke, and his last order was given in a mad _alto_ which terrified the woman browbeating him. It was not Robert's voice; its shrill shriek was the cry of extremity or insanity. She fled upstairs to McNab's room. "Waken! waken! McNab," she cried. "Your master has lost his senses. Run for Dr. Fleming. Make him come back wi' you." "What hae ye been doing to the poor man?" she asked sleepily as she put on her shoes. "Nothing, nothing at all. Just advising him. It is that English cutty--she----" "Meaning Mrs. Robert Campbell?" "Call her what you like. It is her, it is her! She has taken the bairn and gone." "Gone?" "Left her husband forever. Be in a hurry, woman. Don't you hear the man raving like a wild beast?" He was not raving when McNab looked at him in passing. He was lying on the sofa perfectly still, with his hands clasped above his head. So the doctor found him a quarter-of-an-hour later. "You have had a great shock, Campbell," he said. "A shot in the backbone, doctor. My wife has left me, and taken my son with her." "I know! But were you not expecting her to do so?" "No, no! Why should I?" "How much longer did you think your wife could bear--what she had to bear? Come, come, you must look at this trial like a sensible man! I suppose you want to find her?" "It is all I shall live for." "Then you must sleep. I will go with you to your room, and give you a sedative. You must sleep, and get yourself together. Then you will have to make your face iron and brass, for all you will have to meet--advice and pity, blame and sympathy, but you will carry your cup of sorrow without spilling it o'er everybody you meet--or I don't know you. What made you lose your grip to-night?" "Necessity, doctor. I had to, or----" "I know." "One towering rage was better than daily and hourly disputing. The subject is buried now, between my family and myself. It was a necessity."