“It will be better when it is all over,” she had said, turning with one of her quavering, childlike smiles from placing a rose between her son’s unresponsive fingers. “A lame lad couldn’t have gone far in this rapid age.” Dolores, overhearing, felt a sensation new to her. By contrast with its violence, she knew that it was not hate she felt for the puppy. This was the first hate that had racked her--this feeling for Catherine Cabot. “All over”--his mother to anticipate _that_! Now that the boy’s eyes had opened and widened with relief to find herself and John by the bed, the suggestion seemed more inhuman than before. She reached across to take away the rose of such cruel suggestiveness. But Jack’s fingers now closed around the stem. His lips moved. Both she and his father leaned close. “Evening, John Cabot.” “Jack Cabot, good evening.” In an effortful murmur the older John made his usual reply. “And you, ’Lores---- I am glad you are both---- Don’t have anyone else----” Jack’s voice dwindled. Then soon he roused again. “If a picture was taken--of my heart, it would show--just two faces, John’s and ’Lores’. You’ll take my place, John--with Lores? You’ll try to make her happy--like I meant to do? She never was--happy, you know--until she and Dick and I----” The father’s whispered reassurance Dolores tried not to hear, just as she tried not to see the look on his face. But without ears or eyes she must have heard and seen. Her heart was near breaking with grief for the two Johns. “Anything you decide--all right with me. I can trust--her with you. I’d like to see--my dog.” Dolores lifted the young Airedale, which had been biting at her skirt, to the edge of the bed and kept her hand on his collar while he wobbled over the coverlet and licked, in his boisterous, insinuating way, the outstretched hand of “his boy.” Soon she drew him away and replaced him on the floor, from where he whimpered and coaxed to get up again. John, the while, had replaced the rose in his son’s searching hand. They two sat watching the fingers that began to tear apart its petals. “You are wasting your rose, Jackie dear,” Dolores said, to keep his thoughts distracted from the puppy. He paused, but evidently not at her protest. The twittering of his canary in the other room seemed to disturb him. “Poor Dick, he’s taking it hard,” he said and returned to the destruction of the rose. After all the petals lay plucked on the coverlet, he gathered them up in both hands. His gaze, too, settled on the sight of the crimson life-leaves sifting through his pale fingers. “See, they look prettier--and smell sweeter--than before,” he urged, his voice loudening from his effort to reassure them. “The rose isn’t wasted. Nothing ever is. Even I--am not wasted. I’ve never been what other boys--are. But I’m glad I’ve lived long enough to ’preciate you, John. Maybe if I hadn’t--you and ’Lores----”