Lemuel took a step forward; then he stopped. “The fever's gone,” he vainly told the dread freezing about his heart at a stilled white face. “Yes,” he repeated with numb lips; “it's gone.” He approached the bed and standing over it and the meager body he cursed softly and wonderingly. The light was failing and it veiled the sharp lines of the dead child's countenance. For a moment his gaze strayed about the room and he felt a swift sorrow at its ugliness. He had wanted pretty things, pictures and a bright carpet and ribbons, for Flavilla. Then he was conscious of a tearing rage, but now he was unmindful of it, impervious to its assault in the fixed necessity of the present. Later---- He was sitting again on his porch, after the momentary morbid stir of curiosity and small funeral, when the unrestrained sweep of his own emotion overcame him. His appearance had not changed; it was impossible for his expression to become bleaker; but there was a tremendous change within. Yet it was not strange; rather he had the sensation of returning to an old familiar condition. There he was at ease; he moved swiftly, surely forward in the realization of what lay ahead. Bella and June Bowman had left the house almost directly after him, and Markley, finding it empty, with no response to his repeated knocking, had turned away, being as usual both impatient and hurried. Yes, Bella had gone and left Flavilla without even a glass of water. But Bella didn't matter. He couldn't understand this--except where he saw at last that she never had mattered; yet it was so. June Bowman was different. There was no rush about the latter--to-morrow, next week would do equally. There was no doubt either. Lemuel Doret gave a passing thought, like a half-contemptuous gesture of final dismissal, to so much that had lately occupied him. The shadow of a smile disfigured his metallic lips. The following noon he shut the door of his house with a sharp impact and made his way over the single street of Nantbrook toward the city. His fear of it had vanished; and when he reached the steel-bound towering masonry, the pouring crowds, he moved directly to a theater from which an audience composed entirely of men was passing out by the posters of a hectic burlesque. “Clegett?” he asked at the grille of the box office. A small man with a tilted black derby came from the darkened auditorium. “Where have you been?” he demanded as he caught sight of Lemuel Doret. “I asked two or three but you might have been dead for all of them.” “That's just about what I have,” Doret answered. “Mr. Clegett, I'd like a little money.” “How little?” “A hundred would be plenty.” The other without hesitation produced a fold of currency, from which he transferred an amount to Lemuel Doret. It went into his pocket without a glance. He hesitated a moment, then added: “This will be all.”