"Yes—I know," he nodded soberly. "Don’t think I don’t know I’ll have to push the wheel hard—with both shoulders. But d’you know," he lifted a confidential eyebrow, "that young woman—Alicia—will be a great help to me—quite a little housekeeper, she is—quite a kid—I hope Laura will take after her." My heart was of lead. If he was watching my face, he must have perceived a deadly pallor sweeping every drop of blood away from it. There was a pounding in my ear’s like rushing waters. "Alicia," I heard myself saying as one speaking after being rescued from drowning, "Alicia, you know, isn’t my child—or yours. I can’t send her to you. She—there are formalities—but, anyway, her wishes are a factor in the matter. I’ll do anything, old man," my head seemed to swell suddenly and shoot upwards like a cork from an abyss, and my face was damp with perspiration—"anything, but I can’t send that child to you unless—unless she is keen—you see that, don’t you?" "Oh, yes, I see—certainly." He was looking away as he spoke. I have a lingering hope he had not been watching my face. "That’s all true, of course. But put yourself in my place, Randolph. Here are three motherless children. She, that girl, has been a kind of mother to them. Seems to have a born faculty for it. What would I do without her, just starting in like that—you understand!" "Surely, surely!" I hastened to assure him, because I felt slightly more master of myself. "But you see my point—she doesn’t belong to me. And even if she did—I can’t just pass her about—it’s a responsibility—her wish—what I mean is, I can’t coerce her in any way." And suddenly I saw the children away from me, with this dubious, mysterious man, alone, and my heart was wrung with agony. With Alicia, at least—but, no! I could not acquiesce so completely. "Coerce—certainly not," was his wholly reasonable comment. "I reckon a word from you would go a long way, though. But I see your point, Randolph, I see your point. Tell you what!" he began in a new tone. "Suppose we put it this way. I’ll speak to her myself—I’ll put it up to her—leave you out of it altogether, see?—leave it to her to decide—so you won’t have to—you’ll be neutral, you see?—What’s the matter with doing it that way?" A thousand devils within me moved me with all but irresistible force to jump at his throat, to stifle his words, to choke the beastly life out of him, to end the torment then and there. But I could not—I could not. I knew he was expressing by his words his sense of certainty that he could win over Alicia, as he had won the children—that I was helpless in his hands—that I was a weakling whom he was making the barest pretense of respecting—that he could strip my household of all I held dear with an ease so laughable that he could not even bother to ridicule me. And yet I could not rise up and strangle him.