He walked with his eyes set straight ahead, trying to understand, trying to get control of his new emotions. Always there was the sharp, ugly little notion that she still despised him, that she was sacrificing herself that he might be drawn as far away as possible from the child she was so anxious to shield. "I'm going to try my best to make you care for me again," he said, a vast hunger for sympathy and love taking possession of him. "I hope you may, Tom," she said drearily. "You're doing this for Christine," he said resentfully. "Just to get me away, so's I can't trouble her. That's it, isn't it? Tell the truth, Mary." "I would not expect you to do anything for her sake if I were not willing to do a great deal myself," was her enigmatic rejoinder. "Don't hate me, Mary," he burst out. She pressed his arm. "I am giving you a chance," she reminded him. There was still a dreariness in her voice, but he did not detect it. He returned the pressure, half hopeful that the beginning already had been made. Brooks let them in. He had been waiting up for them. "Mr. Braddock will be here over the night, Brooks." "Yes, Mrs. Braddock." He opened the door into the library for them, and then silently hastened upstairs. "You must have been pretty sure of yourself," commented Braddock, in no little wonder. She threw off the shaker cloak. "There is a cold supper for you in the dining-room, Tom--and a piece of a last-minute wedding cake. You must be hungry. While you are eating we will talk over my plan." He went about it as if in a dream. For an hour they discussed her plan for the future. In the end he fell in with it. "I'd be a dog if I didn't give in to you in a matter like this," he said. "You're doing everything for me." "Our room is at the head of the stairs, the first door to the left, Tom," she said, rising. Her face was very pale; she looked old. "The bath adjoins it. If you don't mind I'll stay downstairs awhile. I have many papers to look over and some letters to write." He went upstairs to the wide, high bed-chamber with its azure walls. For a long time he stood in the middle of the room, looking around in dull amazement and doubt. Was it really true that he was there, in the midst of all this elegance and comfort? He glanced at his big hands and started with shame. They were not very clean. The soiled cuffs of an ill-fitting "hickory" shirt came down over his wrists. Involuntarily he pushed them up. The greenish-gray of the coarse jeans garments he wore, clumsy and crumpled, was sadly out of harmony with the delicate, refined colors that surrounded him. It seemed to him all at once that he _jarred on himself_.