This letter reached Haworth at a time when he was beginning again to be frightfully anxious as to where he could obtain money to go on with, for he had only a small amount left and everything they could find in the house that would sell had been disposed of. He was cutting off every possible expense, even to half starving himself, pretending to Mrs. Temple, when she came in on one of her “on” days and wanted to cook things for him, that he had just eaten a hearty meal and couldn’t possibly get down any more. He had an empty baked-bean can that he feloniously left where she would see it, in order to help with the deception. Edith’s letter gave him relief. He sat on his bench in the workroom, thinking it over, and before going to bed he wrote one to her asking if he couldn’t call and see her before the nurse actually left as it was better for him to come while she was there. And so it was arranged. And the nurse was discreet and left them to themselves. And he held the minute bundle of recently arrived humanity in his arms a few moments until it protested vigorously on account of his profound awkwardness. An exquisite hour it was for both of them. But Augustus was informed of what had occurred by the small boy he’d hired to keep a lookout, and on reaching home that evening was so violent and abusive that the nurse started out of the house to bring the police, but he called her back, thereafter subsiding into a scowling silence, and not long after leaving the house. * * * * * On the following day, along toward afternoon, a car came up the drive and the front-door buzzer sounded. Haworth opened the door to the physician in whose care Edith had been at the hospital and who’d been keeping an eye on her since she came back to the Cherry Street cottage. “Mr. Haworth, good afternoon.” “Oh—the doctor, isn’t it?” “Yes, Markham. Met you two or three times at the hospital. Dropped around to have a little talk.” Haworth stood, near to being paralyzed with a frightful dread—some sort of premonition concerning Edith—that stopped his heart. He was aroused by the doctor’s gently turning him about and walking with him into the house. There was no furniture left in the vast dim hall, and Doctor Markham, seeing through the open door on the left that the room beyond had at least chairs and a table in it, guided him in there. Haworth managed to make a motion toward one of the chairs and Doctor Markham seated himself. Then Haworth slowly sat down, without once taking his eyes off the doctor. He heard a voice saying something about there being no cause for alarm and wishing to assure somebody that there was nothing that couldn’t be taken care of if the proper steps were taken without delay. “We’ve had Mrs. Findlay under observation for some little time,” Doctor Markham went on. “I needn’t tell you that the important thing in these cases is to get them in time; and while there was no——”