"I want you, Joan, dear, to go up and play, now, with Nancy. See if you cannot take all the old games and make a new one. That would be such a pleasant thing to do." "Must I, Auntie Dorrie? I'd rather stay here close to you. It's a new game. I like it here." It was hard to send the small, clinging thing away, but Doris was firm. Once alone, she closed her eyes and let her hands fall, palms upward, on her lap. She felt tired and perplexed. There had come a parting of the ways. Apparently the ninth year was a dangerous year. What must she do? Was Mary more ignorant than she seemed or--more knowing? What had Mary known at Ridge House? The dull, quiet girl, as Doris recalled her, seemed merely a part of the machinery of the Sisters' Home; she had never taken her into account--but had she been what she seemed? What was she now? It was appalling--in the doubt as to what was, or was not--to think that so much had been taken for granted. The children had seemed babies. The mere physical care had been the main consideration, and while that was going on Joan had grown weary of the old games and Nancy had learned to gain her ends by indirect methods. Clearly, Doris must have help at this juncture. "I see," she thought on, heavily, "why fathers _and_ mothers are none too many where children are concerned." It was then that she thought of David Martin in a strangely new way--a way that brought a faint colour to her cheeks. All the afternoon she thought of him while she, having set Mary to other tasks, devoted herself to Nancy and Joan. She read to them, scampered through the house with them, did anything and everything they suggested, until she had subdued the nervous strain and could laugh a bit at her bugbears of the morning. Joan, flushed and towzled, Nancy, sweetly radiant, effaced the menacing images her anxiety had created--but she still needed help. And David Martin was the one, the only one among her friends who seemed adequate to her need. "I've tried to be a mother," she thought, "but I have taken the father out of their lives--I must supply it." When the children were in bed and the house quiet, Doris went to the sunken room and, taking up the telephone receiver, called her number. She was calm and at peace. She was prepared to lay the whole matter of the past few years before David Martin, and she was conscious, already, of relief. "I am going to let myself--go!" she thought, her ear waiting for a reply. It was Martin who answered. "David, are you quite free for an hour?" "For the entire evening, Doris. Are the children sick?" How like Martin that was! What most concerned and interested Doris was first in his thought. Doris's face twitched. "It's my friend," she said, slowly, "that I want. Not my physician." "I'll be there in a half hour."