Of course this acceptance of the situation veered every day in gusts of misery and terror; but, on the whole, the desire for peace prevailed. Yet the week she had allowed herself in which to think it over, lengthened to ten days before she began to write her letter. She sat down at her desk late in the afternoon, but by tea-time she had done nothing more than tear up half a dozen beginnings. After supper David rattled the backgammon-board significantly. "You are pretty slow, aren't you?" he asked, as she loitered about her desk, instead of settling down to the usual business of the evening. "Don't you think, just to-night, you would rather read a story?" she pleaded. "No, ma'am," said David, cheerfully. So, sighing, she opened the board on her knees. David beat her to a degree that made him very condescending, and also extremely displeased by the interruption of a call from William King. "Nobody is sick," David said politely; "you needn't have come." "Somebody is sick further up the hill," William excused himself, smiling. "Is Mr. Wright worse?" Helena said quickly. She lifted the backgammon-board on to the table, and whispered a word of manners to David, who silently stubbed his copper-toed shoe into the carpet. "No," the doctor said, "he's better, if anything. He managed to ask Simmons for a poached egg, which made the old fellow cry with joy; and he swore at me quite distinctly because I did not get in to see him this morning. I really couldn't manage it, so I went up after tea, and he was as mad as--as David," said William, slyly. And David, much confused, kicked vigorously. "Do you think he will ever be able to talk?" she said. William would not commit himself. "Perhaps; and perhaps not. I didn't get anything clear out of him to-night, except--a bad word." "Damn?" David asked with interest. William chuckled and then remembered to look proper. But David feeling that he was being laughed at, hid his face on Helena's shoulder, which made her lift him on to her knee. There, in the drowsy warmth of the little autumn fire, and the quiet flow of grown people's meaningless talk, he began to get sleepy; gradually his head slipped from her shoulder to her breast, and when she gathered his dangling legs into her lap, he fell sound asleep. "It isn't his bedtime yet," she excused herself. She rested her cheek on the child's head and looked over at the doctor. She wore a dark crimson silk, the bosom filled with sheer white muslin that was caught together under her soft chin by a little pearl pin; her lace undersleeves were pushed back so that William could see the lovely lines of her white wrists. Her parted hair fell in soft, untidy waves down over her ears; she was staring absently across David's head into the fire.