Now he gave up and, cowering in a heap, waited dumbly for the crashing downfall--he who had fallen so low, was he to fall again, lower still? He who had thought he had kept nothing at all for himself in life, must he give up now his one living treasure, his self-respect? Could it be that he was thinking--he, Lester Knapp!--of shamming a sickness he did not have, of trampling his honor deep into the filth of small, daily lies? The thought carried him with a rush over the wicked gleaming curve at the edge of the abyss ... he was falling ... falling.... There was nothing but a formless horror of yelling whirlpools, which sucked him down.... * * * * * Presently it was dawn. A faint gray showed at the windows. The blemishes on the ceiling came into view and stalked grimly to their accustomed stand in his brain. The night was over. Stephen lay sleeping peacefully, the harmless, blackened bits of the burned curtain scattered about his bed. “Father, father, where are you going? Oh, do not walk so fast. Speak, father, speak to....” It was not fast he would be walking. Or at all. * * * * * A robin chirped sleepily in the maple. It would soon be day. Lester got up, shuffled over to his wheel chair and sat down in it. * * * * * After a time he stooped down and unlaced his shoes. Then he wheeled himself over beside Stephen’s bed and waited for the day to come. Chapter 22 Dr. Merritt had telephoned Mrs. Knapp that he was going to make some very special tests of her husband’s condition that afternoon, tests which might be conclusive as to the possibility of recovery. He had chosen Sunday, he told her, because he wished her to be at home. He tried to make his voice sound weighty and warning, and he knew that he had succeeded when, on arriving at the house, he found Mrs. Farnham there, with a very sober face, twisting her handkerchief nervously in her hands. The two women looked at him in silent anxiety as he came in. He asked with an impenetrable professional manner to have his patient’s chair rolled into the next room. “It is always better to make those nerve-reflex tests in perfect quiet,” he explained. Mr. Knapp with no comment rolled his chair back into the dining-room, and the doctor closed the door. * * * * * In a few moments, Helen, very pale, with frightened eyes, came in to join the waiting women. She found them as pale as she, motionless in their chairs, her mother’s lips trembling. She sat down on a stool beside Aunt Mattie, who patted her shoulder and said something in a tremulous whisper which Helen did not catch. From the other room, from behind the closed door, came a low murmur of voices broken by long pauses. There was no other sound except Stephen’s shout as he played with Henry’s dog in the back yard.