When she stepped out of the cab she did not even glance at the house. She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and went into the dim, tiled hall. She was empty, capable of precise, brisk movement. All her fear, her pressure of anxiety, her physical weariness, were held in solution, waiting the moment which would crystallize them. She stood at the elevator shaft, her finger on the button. The car was beneath her, the dust-nap of its top at her feet. The bell shrilled, but nothing else stirred. The man is asleep, she thought, dispassionately, and without haste she began to climb the stairs to the fifth floor. At the door she stopped again, staring a moment at the small card, HAMMOND. She had no key. If she rang, she would waken everyone. But she must, in some way, enter. She knocked, softly. Her face, turned up to the dark painted grain of the metal door, grew imploring. There was her door, and she couldn't open it, couldn't know what was behind it! Like a dreadful nightmare. She pounded with her knuckles. Then, softly, the door opened, and Charles, his bathrobe trailing, his eyes sleep-swollen, was blinking at her. She seemed a dream to him, too! "Why, Catherine--you? How'd you get here, this time of day?" He whispered, and then he closed the door with a caution alarming in its quietness. "Spencer! Tell me--" Catherine's nostrils quivered at a strange smell in the dark hall, an odor of antiseptics, of drugs. "Thought you'd never come." Charles muttered. "Ghastly, your not being here." "Is he here?" Catherine started to pass Charles, but he caught her, held her a moment. Catherine felt in the pressure of his arms, in his harsh kiss, the thwarted rage, helplessness, distress--she knew she had those to meet, later. Now-- "Tell me, please!" she begged. "Spencer." "He's better." Charles released her. "Sleeping now. Mustn't disturb him." He led the way to the living room, past closed, dark doors. "We'd better go into the kitchen." Catherine stumbled into a chair. "He was hurt, coasting. He and Walter Thomas. Right in front of the house. Miss Kelly was just coming out with the other children, to take them all to the park. He and Walter--coasted around the corner, into a truck. Hurt his head. Miss Kelly carried him in here herself." Charles was leaning against the table, his face away from Catherine, his mouth twisting wryly. Catherine touched his hand. "When I got home, Henrietta was here, and another surgeon. His head--" Catherine swung up to a sharp peak of agony--Spencer? She saw, unbearably, that fine, sensitive, growing life of his, smeared over. "They didn't dare move him. Unconscious. Stitches in his temple. They think now he's all right." He grew suddenly voluble, shrill. "You can't tell about such things at once. Have to wait. Might injure his brain. But he's been conscious, perfectly clear-headed, normal. Got a good nurse. Just keep him quiet, flat on his back. Children are tough-- Oh, Catherine----"