In the living-room Eris flung scarf and reticule on the sofa, stood for a moment twisting her fingers in helpless revolt; then, fighting off nervous reaction, she paced the room striving to think what to do, what was right to do in this miserable emergency. Did she owe this man anything more than she owed to any sick, hungry, ragged man? If so, _what_? How much? How far did the law run that fettered her? What were the statutes which exacted service? And the ethics of the case--what were they? Anything except the bare morals involved? Anything except the ordinary humanity operating generally in such cases and involving her in obvious obligation? Were they the obligations which once involved those who looked upon Lazarus and “passed by on the other side”? Were they really more vital? She went slowly back to the kitchen. Hearing her approach, her husband had crossed both arms on the table and dropped his marred face in them. “Are you really very ill, Stuart?” she asked calmly. “No. I’ll go----” He tried, apparently, to get to his feet; fell back on the chair, whimpering. There was a small room off the pantry where, in emergency, Hattie sometimes slept on a box-couch. “You can lie down there for a while if you wish,” she said. She helped him get up; he stumbled toward the pantry, guided by her, to the couch in the little room beyond. Here he sank down and dropped his head between his hands. She had turned to leave but halted and looked back at him from the pantry doorway. “I had better call a physician,” she said, frightened by his deathly colour. He might have explained that his pasty skin was partly due to prison pallor, partly to drugs. Instead he asked for a little more whiskey. “I don’t want a doctor,” he muttered; “I’ll be all right after a nap. This whiskey will pull me together.... You go to bed.” After a while he looked up at her, rested so, his shadowy eyes fixed on her with a sort of stealthy intentness. “You’d better sleep if you can,” she said. “I’ll have to wake you soon. It is growing very late.” “Oh God!” he burst out suddenly, “what a wreck I’ve made of our lives!” “Not of mine,” she retorted coolly; and turned to leave. “I’m sorry,” he whined. “I didn’t mean to get you in wrong.... I meant to go straight after we were married.... But they got me wrong, Eris, they got me wrong!... It was the very last job I ever meant to do.... I gave up the plates. That’s how they let me off with a light one.... I’m out over a month, now----” “Were you in--in _prison_!” she demanded with an overwhelming surge of disgust. He began to snivel: “You couldn’t get over _that_, could you, Eris?... And what I did to you--getting you in wrong--disgracing you that way----” She made no answer but her grey eyes grew cold. “You couldn’t ever forgive me, could you, Eris?” he whimpered, watching her intently. “I can forget you, in time, if you keep away from me.... But--it is terrible to see you--_terrible_!”