She rose, and he put out his hand to assist her, but she crossed the stile without touching his fingers, and they silently approached the courtyard. At a late hour, when the party dispersed, Judge Kent was the first person who reached his own room. Soon after, Eglah tapped at his door. As he opened it, a flood of light streamed over her cold, proud face, and his keen gaze seemed to probe her soul. "Well?" She shook her head and stretched her arms towards him. "Father----" He laid a finger heavily on her trembling lips, then turned her around, pushed her gently but firmly back from the threshold, and locked the door on the inside. The remaining hours of the night Mr. Herriott spent pacing slowly the beach-walk, realizing anew the hopelessness of any change in conditions that barred him from his heart's desire, and the wisdom of his determination to travel as far as possible. The moon, magnified by mist into a vast sphere of silver, swam in the west, tipping each wavelet with a glittering fringe, and now and then crooning whispers of the great expanse of water seemed to swell and fill the echoing hollows of the brooding night. The intense bitterness of Mr. Herriott's reflections crept into his voice. "Loyal soul! Nobody can help her now. Rude winds have blown wide the guarded gate of her temple, and she will spend her life on her knees, trying to regild the clay feet of her one image." CHAPTER XIV "My son, Leighton Dane Temple, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." Other than baptismal drops fell on the boy's head, as with unsteady lips and brimming eyes Father Temple bent over him; and the hand that administered the rite clung tenderly to the damp curls. The room was very dim and still, the atmosphere heavy with the breath of tuberoses clustered on the pillow, and the figure sitting at the foot of the cot with her arms folded, manifested by sound or motion no more interest than a stone image. On the mantel shelf was the tin box bearing her name, and many days before letters, newspapers, and money had testified to the truth of her husband's statements, but to its contents she made no allusion, allowed none. Their estrangement was too complete to be bridged even by words when avoidance was possible. Occasionally, as he entered or left the room, she acknowledged his salutation by a slight inclination of her head; but usually sullen silence and apparent unconsciousness of his presence showed how bitterly she resented a presentation of facts that pleaded his exculpation. She hugged her wrongs, and any attempt to minimize his guilt infuriated her. Her ruined life was an acrid dead sea, into which no sweetness could fall, and she clung to its most loathsome aspects with a grim stubbornness unnatural and incomprehensible in women of a different type. The boy's death had seemed imminent more than once, and though he rallied again and again, the sands were surely near the end, running low.