"You look like her," he said at last, with so much the air of speaking to himself that Ewing made no answer. He moved toward the door with bowed head. At the threshold he looked back at Ewing a brief moment, then went out, closing the door softly behind him. Ewing decided that his neighbor was a curious old man. Recalling other curious people he had met in this strange new world, he was reminded of the lady who had urged him to call on her. He was still ready to believe that anyone might wish to talk to him, or to hear him talk. But in spite of this, the old lady had been queer. From the table he picked up the card she had given him, studying the name and wondering what they might talk about. He was still feeling this mild wonder when he rang the lady's bell at five o'clock. CHAPTER XV FLESH OF HER FLESH Two persons had waited for Ewing. Mrs. Lowndes was one of them, sitting forward in her chair and braced on its arms, though her head dropped now and then in forgetfulness. The other was a big, shambling old man, a dark man gone gray, his face needing the kindly, yellowish-brown eyes to save it from sternness. His thickets of eyebrows were joined in a half-humorous scowl of perplexity. "I had to send for you, Fred. You and Herbert Sydenham are the only two left who were close to me then, and Herbert Sydenham--well--" she laughed a laugh of exquisitely humorous pain--"Herbert would have forgotten me any time these twenty years for a striking color scheme, a streak of unpaintable moonshine. It was you, Fred, or no one, and it hurt me so! All last night I was on the rocks being ground to bits. I knew you would say the wise thing." The big man had risen to walk the floor, his thick shoulders heaving as if to throw off invisible burdens, his head shaking doggedly. "Yes, Kitty, yes--" His voice was big but low, the voice of his whole being bent to soothe. He came to her side and reached down to take one of the frail, blue-veined hands between his own two, huge and hairy. They closed upon hers with a kind of awkward effectiveness. "Of course you had to come to me, but I'm afraid all I can do is to brace you." "I wanted you to be with me. I couldn't have borne it alone, Fred--his being here--Kitty's child." "And you say he doesn't know?" "I'm certain of it, and Eleanor Laithe doesn't know; but those are little things when I know." "We'll see, Kitty--we'll see. Perhaps I can help. But I suspect it's one of those matters where you must be your own guide. You'll act as you feel; not as I think--not even as you think." "Ellen is going to the door," she whispered, almost fiercely, bracing herself in the chair. As the maid held back the curtain at the doorway, Ewing advanced uncertainly, an embarrassed smile on his lips, the look of one who would be agreeable if he knew how. He saw Mrs. Lowndes stiffly fixed in her chair, her white-crowned head thrown back, and he would have taken her hand but she diverted him from this.