"I don't like to blame anyone, of course," he said, with knitted brows, "but if Sarah didn't have sense enough--well, Silas has lived in Cuba long enough to have known that the heat yesterday was sufficient to knock out a strong man, much less a little boy, if he became over-tired." "I'm afraid it was my fault," I answered, slowly, "Peter was riding all morning and romping all afternoon. And then I took him for a walk--" "Did you know then that he had been playing hard all day?" Bill asked me. "Why, yes," I said honestly, "but I was thinking about something else, and--" Bill's hand went out in an impatient gesture. "Didn't _you_ feel the heat?" he asked. "I suppose so," I answered, "but I had been in the house all day--" "And Peter hadn't!" he finished for me, somewhat irrelevantly, I thought. I was silent. "It's incredible," said my husband, with extreme irritation, "that you shouldn't have noticed." "But--" I began, and stopped. It was true. I hadn't noticed; and it was equally true that the fact was incredible. Conscious of my guilt, I was still able to be resentful of my husband's tone. "Do you think for a minute--" I began indignantly, with no clear idea of how I was going to finish: so perhaps it was just as well that I was interrupted. "I don't think anything at all," he said, "but I _know_ that I shouldn't have gone away. Had I known the day was going to turn out such a scorcher, I would have stayed." His tone implied that what he should have known was that I was not fit to be trusted alone. I didn't like the implication, and I said so. After which, at the end of ten minutes, I had positively flounced from the room, after the manner of our grandmothers, and left him sitting there. I didn't see him again until dinner. It was not a particularly joyful meal. During the rather silent progress of dinner, I had the grace to be rather ashamed of some of the things I had said. In the cooler light of reason, I looked on a number of the statements I had made and found them unconvincing. Our sporadic conversation was of trivial things. Not until Wing had departed kitchenward, and Bill lighted his after-luncheon cigarette, was our late unpleasantness alluded to.