Recalling the scene, he remembered how outwardly commonplace were the moments which followed. Even Hilmer had been surprised into banalities. Fred Starratt might have parted with them but yesterday, for any indications to the contrary, and for an instant he had found all sense of tragedy swallowed up in amazement at the passive tenacity of the conventions. But sitting there, facing this trio, each busy with his own swift thought, it gradually dawned upon Fred Starratt that now they were afraid of him. Like a captured and blinded Samson he was in a position to bring the temple walls crashing down upon them all. _They_ might elect to be silent, but what a voice _he_ could raise!... He had come out of a chuckling silence to hear Hilmer saying between almost shut teeth: "I suppose you'll be needing money now, Starratt... Railroad rates have all been raised." He felt at that moment the same triumph as when Storch had turned the key in its lock... Hilmer always did walk directly to his objective ... but there were times when subtleties had more power. He remembered the quiet thrust of his own voice measuring his adversary's expectancy: "A man in my situation needs nothing, Hilmer ... least of all _money_!" He never forgot the look of contempt which Hilmer threw at him ... but this time it had been a contempt for the unfathomable. Helen's face was white; only Mrs. Hilmer had continued to smile ... a set, ghastly, cruel smile of complete satisfaction. And, in the silence which followed, it was Mrs. Hilmer's voice that brought them all back with a start as she said: "Well, here we are ... home again!" It was the same voice that had broken in upon another tense situation months before with: "What nice corn pudding this is, Mrs. Starratt...Would you mind telling me how you made it?" Had they been moving in a circle since that fatal evening, Fred had found himself wondering...or had he merely been dreaming? The scene which followed had been unforgetable--the chauffeur and Hilmer lifting Mrs. Hilmer into her wheeled chair; Helen Starratt coming forward considerately with a steamer rug for the invalid's comfort; Fred, standing outside the pale of all this activity like a dreamer constructing stage directions for the puppets of his imagination. And out of the almost placid atmosphere of domestic bustle the voice of Mrs. Hilmer again breaking the stillness, this time with a cool and knifelike precision as she said, turning her pale, icy eyes on Helen Starratt: "My dear, your nurse-girl days are over...We've had you a long time and we can't be too selfish--now that your husband is back!" Could Fred ever wipe from his memory the startled look which had swept Helen's face as she released her hold on the wheeled chair? Or the diabolical content with which Mrs. Hilmer settled back as she went on slowly, clearly, as if the steady drip of her words fascinated her: