Anne stood at the foot of the stairs. She had the air of defending the way, lest he rush up before he was intelligently prepared. "We don't know what it is. He went all to pieces. It was just after you had gone. I found him there, shaking. He just said to me: 'I'll go to bed.' So I helped him. That's all I know." Jeff felt an instant and annoyed compunction. He had dashed off, to the tune of his own wild mood, and left his father to the assaults of emotions perhaps as overwhelming and with no young strength to meet them. "I'll go up," said he. "Did you call a doctor?" "No. He wouldn't let me." Jeff ran up the stairs and found Lydia in a chair outside the colonel's door. She looked pathetically tired and anxious. And so young: if she had arranged herself artfully to touch the sympathies she couldn't have done it to more effect. Her round arms were bare to the elbow, her hands were loosely clasped, and she was sitting, like a child, with her feet drawn up under her on the rung of the chair. She looked at him in a solemn relief but, he saw with a relief of his own, no sensitiveness to his presence apart from the effect it might have on her father. "He's asleep," she said, in a whisper. "I'm sitting here to listen." Jeffrey nodded at her in a bluff way designed to express his certainty that everything was going to be on its legs again now he had come home. For the first time he felt like the man in the house, and the thin tonic braced him. He opened the door of his father's room and went in. The colonel's voice came at once: "That you, Jeff?" "Yes," said Jeff. He sat down by the bedside in the straight-backed chair that had evidently been comfortable enough for the sisters' anxious watch. "What's the matter, father?" The colonel moved slightly nearer the edge of the bed. His eyes brightened, Jeff noted by the light of the shaded lamp. He was glad to get his son home again. "Jeff," said he, "I've been lying here making up my mind I'd tell you." Jeffrey rose and closed the door he had left open a crack out of courtesy to the little watcher there. He came back to the bed, not with a creaking caution, but like a man bringing a man's rude solace. He could not believe his father was seriously undone. But, whatever was the matter, the colonel was glad to talk. Perhaps, loyal as he was, even he could scarcely estimate his own desire to turn from soft indulgences to the hard contact of a man's intelligence. "Jeff," said he, "I'm in a bad place. I've met the last enemy." "Oh, no, you haven't," said Jeff, at random. "The last enemy is Death. That's what they say, don't they? Well, you're years and years to the good. Don't you worry." "Ah, but the last enemy isn't Death," said the colonel wisely. "Don't you think it. The last enemy is Fear. Death's only the executioner. Fear delivers you over, and then Death has to take you, whether or no. But Fear is the arch enemy."