Mrs. Craighill had never understood him less than in that instant when, half turning to leave, she saw the far-away look of his eyes, the straightening of his figure and the indifferent glance that showed his acquiescence in her departure. It was at this moment that the lights in the hall, which they had turned off when they sought the library, flashed on again. Mrs. Craighill sprang to the switch inside the library door and darkened the room. The hall lights fell only faintly across the library threshold, but as she peered out through the portières Mrs. Craighill saw her husband slowly descending, clad in his dressing gown, some papers in his hand. Her heart tore at her breast as she waited. When he reached the hall she was quite sure that he would come into the library and she put her hand over her mouth to stifle her frightened breathing. But he turned toward the little coat room and she heard him at the telephone. She was faint from fear, but Wayne caught her wrist and held her. Colonel Craighill was dictating a message to the telegraph office; cries for help these messages were, Wayne knew, to friends in New York and Philadelphia, and they added testimony to the worst Wayne knew of his father’s plight. “Come,” Wayne whispered to the shrinking woman--“come.” He drew her across the room and through a little-used door that communicated with the rear of the house, to a circular stairway that led to the upper floors, and waited until he heard the door above open and shut softly. Then he went back to the library and saw his father pass into the lighted area of the hall and mount the stair slowly. The lights were snapped out from above and the house was still. Wayne sighed deeply and sought in the dark the chair in which Jean had sat that morning. When the light of the late winter dawn crept in grayly he was still there, his head bowed in his arms on the table. CHAPTER XXIX “YOU LOVE ANOTHER MAN, JEAN” It was two weeks later that Jean, paying her daily visit to the parish house, found Joe sitting up in bed. The nurse was to leave the next day, and Joe was impatient to be about again. The room had taken on a brighter air from Joe’s convalescence. A light had been so arranged by his bed that he could read and he had gorged himself with sporting supplements which Paddock had collected for him. Life had begun to interest Joe again. The philosophers of the diamond were already speculating as to the disposition of players, great and small; strategy boards were in session wherever “fiends” congregated, planning the campaigns of the approaching season. Pittsburg’s chances of winning the pennant were, even in December, a burning issue among men of apparent sanity. Jean drew off her coat and sat down near him. She had brought three carnations and gave them into his hand to hold while she found a glass for them. “They’re nice flowers. Thank you, Jean.”