As the disease ran on in its course, to him it became more and more a question of how the issue would turn upon so-called little things, as the recovery of a patient is probably sometimes secured by merely turning him from side to side, from back to stomach. It was his problem how to drop into one scale or the other scale of the childish balances some almost imponderable weight, as when good tidings arriving save a life, as when bad news held back saves a life; as when the removal of an injustice from a sensitive spirit saves a life; as when the healing of a wound of the mind in the very extremity saves a life. He felt that before him now were oscillating those delicate balances, never quite in equilibrium: a joy dropped into one, a sorrow dropped into the other--some pennyweight of new peace, some grain of additional worry! The shadows collected on one side, sunbeams gathered on the other. "Now then," he thought within himself, "now then is the hour when I must be sunlight to him--not shadow!" He watched the look in his little boy's eyes; he noted the presence of things weighing heavily. There was a tangle, a perplexity, a tossing of the head from side to side on the pillow--as if to turn quickly away from things seen. "Do I cast a light on him? Do I cast a shadow? Does my presence here by him bring tranquillity, rest, sound sleep? As he sees into me, does what he sees strengthen? Was his chastisement that morning a sunbeam? It had not struck him like a sunbeam; it had not fallen in that way! The chill in the house all these years--had that been vital warmth to him?" There now came out the meaning of all that exaggeratedly careful training: the exercise, the outdoor life, everything: it was the attempt to develop robust health on a foundation not robust: everything went back to the poor start: each child had been born delicate. At intervals during the illness there were bits of talk. One night the doctor rose from the bedside and brought a glass of pure fresh water and administered a spoonful and watched the swallowing and the expression:-- "Does it taste bitter?" "Pretty bitter. You can't say that I didn't take your nasty old doses, can you?" "Don't talk! You mustn't talk." "I'd feel better if I did talk--if I could get it out of me." "Then talk! What is it? Out with it!" But the face was jerked quickly away with that motion of wishing to look in another direction. Some nights there was delirium. Through the brain rolled clouds of fantasies:-- "_... If I knew how it comes out between you and Mrs. Ousley...._" On these dark rolling clouds the father tried to throw a beam of peace: and it was no moment to hold back any of the truth:-- "_It is all over!... There is nothing of it._" "_I wish I had known it sooner: it bothered me...._" At another time more fantasies:-- "_... Not on the cheek! You're no father of mine if it's on the cheek...._" At another time:--