She shook her head slowly; and Kite looked from man to man triumphantly. Routt cried: “Hetty, you don’t understand. He said Wint was your--your baby’s father? That’s not true. It can’t be.” She looked at Routt; and there was a somber light in her eyes. She said, in a low, steady voice: “Yes. Sure it’s true.” Her eyes remained on Routt. He stepped back as though she had struck him. Wint raised his head and looked around the room; saw Amos squinting at his pipe; saw B. B. ill at ease, and Skinner squirming; saw his father white and shaken in his seat. Then Routt turned to him, exclaiming: “Wint, for God’s sake.... You heard what she said.” Wint hardly knew himself; he was, suddenly and surprisingly, very calm, and happy with an anguished happiness of renunciation. The old stubborn, prideful Wint would have denied, have fought, have sworn. But Wint looked at Hetty; he was terribly sorry for her. He surrendered himself to a great and splendid magnanimity. “Yes,” he told Routt. “I heard.” “But it’s a lie!” Wint got up slowly, looked around the room, studied them all; and he smiled. “Hetty would not lie about me,” he said. “She and I have always been friends. We are going to be married, right away.” He held them a moment more with his steady gaze; they were frozen, every man. And then he looked at Hetty, and saw her eyes widen pitifully, and saw her face twist with anguish. And he smiled reassuringly, and he said: “It’s all right, Hetty. Truly. Don’t be afraid.” While they were still motionless, he turned and went quietly into the hall. Muldoon had been dozing under his chair; the dog scrambled up now and followed him. Wint got his hat and went out of the house, Muldoon upon his heels. In the room he had left, every man was very still. Only poor Hetty crumpled slowly in her chair; and she dropped her head in her arms upon the table and began to cry, with great, gasping sobs. And she whispered to herself, so harshly that they all could hear: “My God! My God! Oh, my God!” END OF BOOK V BOOK VI VICTORY CHAPTER I THE WEAVER HOUSE AGAIN There is a dramatist hidden in every one of us. We like to cast ourselves as heroes, as heroines, as villains of the piece. Make-believe is one of the fundamental instincts. It is human nature to construct a drama about our lives; it is also very human to seize dramatic situations. There was a good deal of the dramatic in Wint. When he left his home that night, Muldoon at his heels, he was acutely conscious that his life was broken. He had lost everything. He had lost father, and mother; and he had lost Joan. They were irrevocably gone. Furthermore, he was beaten in his fight. There could be no question of this. Hardiston would overwhelm him. There was left for him in this world--nothing.