They played two hours, and the game calmed her but could not save her from the blackness of her mood. It came upon her, as it always did if it were coming, a few minutes after she had got into bed, turned out her light and had begun to discover that sleep was not close at hand. Life seemed to her all effort without purpose. She felt like a martyr at the stake; only she had no vision to bear her company. She felt her loneliness to be not the result of anything she said or did, but inevitable. There seemed to be nothing in the universe but chaos and herself. She turned on her light again and read until almost morning. Nights like this were not unusual with Lydia. CHAPTER VI Joe Thorne had been fond of telling a story about Lydia in her childhood--in the days before Miss Bennett came to them. After some tremendous scene of naughtiness and punishment, she had come to him and said: "Father, if you're not angry at me any more, I'm not angry at you." It was characteristic of her still. She was not afraid to come forward and make up, but she was shy with the spoken word. She couldn't make an emotional apology, but she managed to convey in all sorts of dumb ways that she wanted to be friends--she contrived to remember some long ungratified wish of Benny's, whether it were a present, or a politeness to some old friend, or sometimes only an errand that Benny had never been able to get her to do. There was always a definite symbol that Lydia was sorry, and she was always forgiven. Part of Eleanor's sense of her own superiority to the world lay in being more than usually impervious to emotion. Besides she had expressed herself satisfactorily at the time by leaving the house, so that she forgave too. Only of course a scene like that is never without consequences--everybody's endurance had snapped a few more strands like a fraying rope. And there were consequences, too, in Lydia's own nature. She seemed to have become permanently wrong-headed and violent on any subject even remotely connected with the district attorney. This was evident a few days later when a voice proclaiming itself that of Judge Homans' secretary asked her if she could make it convenient to stop at the judge's chambers that afternoon to give the court some information in regard to a former maid of hers--Evans. Lydia's tone showed that it was not at all convenient. It seemed at one instant as if she were about to refuse point-blank to go. Then she yielded, and from that minute it became clear that her mind was continually occupied with the prospect of the visit. Late in the afternoon she appeared before the judge's desk in his little room, lined with shelves of calf-bound volumes. It was a chilly November afternoon, and she had just come from tea at the golf club after eighteen holes. She was wrapped in a bright golden-brown coat, and a tomato-colored hat was pulled down over her brows.