The two women sat in silence close together, looking at the white wall of the bedroom. “I suppose we had both better remember that we heard mother moving about the house after father went away,” Jane whispered presently. It was pleasant to be able to make herself, thus, a part of Katherine’s plans to protect her father. Her eyes were shining now, and there was something of feverishness in her eagerness to understand everything clearly but she kept pressing her body close against the body of Katherine. In the palm of her hand she still held the stone her father had given her and now when her finger pressed down upon it even lightly there was a comforting throb of pain from the tender hurt place in her palm. V And as the two women sat on the bed, John Webster walked through the silent deserted streets toward the railroad station with his new woman, Natalie. “Well, the devil,” he thought as he plodded along, “this has been a night! If the rest of my life is as busy as these last ten hours have been I’ll be kept on the jump.” Natalie was walking in silence and carrying a bag. The houses along the street were all dark. There was a strip of grass between the brick sidewalk and the roadway and John Webster stepped over and walked upon it. He liked the idea of his feet making no sound as he escaped out of the town. How pleasant it would be if he and Natalie were winged things and could fly away unobserved in the darkness. Now Natalie was weeping. Well that was all right. She did not weep audibly. John Webster did not, as a matter of fact, know for sure that she was weeping. Still he did know. “At any rate,” he thought, “when she weeps she does the job with a certain dignity.” He was himself in a rather impersonal mood. “There’s no use thinking too much about what I’ve done. What’s done is done. I’ve begun a new life. I couldn’t turn back now if I chose.” The houses along the street were dark and silent. The whole town was dark and silent. In the houses people were sleeping, dreaming all manner of absurd dreams, too. Well he had expected he would run into some kind of a row at Natalie’s house but nothing of the sort had happened. The old mother had been quite wonderful. John Webster half regretted he had never known her personally. There was something about the terrible old woman that was like himself. He smiled as he walked along on the strip of grass. “It may well be that in the end I will turn out an old reprobate, a regular old heller,” he thought almost gaily. His mind played with the idea. He had surely made a good start. Here he was, a man well past the middle age, and it was past midnight, almost morning, and he was walking in deserted streets with a woman with whom he was going away to live what was called an illegitimate life. “I started late but I’m proving a merry little upsetter of things now that I’ve started,” he told himself.