When Amabel had had her hot bath, and had drunk her sage tea by compulsory gulps, and been tucked into Ellen's bed, her childhood reasserted itself. Gradually her body and her bodily needs gained the ascendancy over the unnatural strain of her mind. She fell asleep, and lay like one dead. Then Ellen crept down-stairs, though it was almost midnight, where her father and mother and grandmother were still talking over the matter. Fanny seemed almost as bad as her sister. It was evident that there was in the undisciplined Loud family a dangerous strain if too far pressed. She was lying down on the lounge, with Andrew holding her hand. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Poor Eva!" she kept repeating. Then she threw off Andrew's hand, sprang to her feet, and began to walk the room. "She'll be as bad as her sister if she keeps on," said Mrs. Zelotes, quite audibly, but Fanny paid no attention to that. "What is goin' to be done? Oh, my God, what is goin' to be done?" she wailed. "There she is locked up with two men watchin' her lest she do herself a harm, and it's got to cost eighteen dollars a week, unless she's put in with the State poor, and then nobody knows how she'll be treated. Oh, poor Eva, poor Eva! Albert Riggs told me there were awful things done with the State poor in the asylums. He's been an attendant in one. He says we've got to pay eighteen dollars a week if we want to have her cared for decently, and where's the money comin' from?" Fanny raised her voice higher still. "Where's the money comin' from?" she demanded, with an impious inflection. It was as if she questioned that which is outside of, and the source of, life. Everything with this woman, whose whole existence had been bound and tainted by the need of money, resolved itself into that fundamental question. All her woes hinged upon it; even her misery was deteriorated by mammon. "Where's the money comin' from?" she demanded again. "There's Jim gone, and all his mother's got is that little, mortgaged place, and she feeble, and there ain't a cent anywhere, unless--" She turned fiercely to Andrew, clutching him hard by the arm. "You must take every cent of that money out of the savings-bank," she cried, "every cent of it. I'm your wife, and I've been a good wife to you, you can't say I haven't." "Yes, of course you have, poor girl! Don't, don't!" said Andrew, soothingly. He was very pale, and shook from head to foot as he tried to calm Fanny. "Yes, I've been a good, faithful wife," Fanny went on, in her high, hysterical voice. "Even your mother can't say that I haven't; and Eva is my own sister, and you ought to help her. Every cent of that money will have to come out of the savings-bank, and the house here will have to be mortgaged; it's only my due. I would do as much for you if it was your sister. Eva ain't goin' to suffer."