The corners of Lydia's mouth twitched nervously. "You are a good man," she said to her godfather. She looked at Rankin for a moment without speaking, and then turned toward the house, wavering. "Will you help me back?" she said to the doctor, her voice quite flat and toneless; "I am horribly tired." * * * * * When the doctor came back again to the arbor, Mrs. Sandworth was with him, her bearing, like his, that of a person in the midst of some cataclysmic upheaval. It was evident that her brother had told her. Without greeting Rankin, she sat down and fixed her eyes on his face. She did not remove them during the talk that followed. The doctor stood by the table, drumming with his fingers and grimacing. "You must know," he finally made a beginning with difficulty, "I don't know whether you realize, not being a physician, that she is really not herself. She has for the present a mania for providing as she thinks best for her children's future. Of course no one not a monomaniac would so entirely ignore your side, would conceive so strange an idea. She is so absorbed in her own need that she does not realize what an unheard-of request she is making. To burden yourself with two young children--to mortgage all your future--" Rankin broke in with a shaking voice and a face of exultation: "Good God, Doctor! Don't grudge me this one chance of my life!" The doctor stared, bewildered. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "About myself. I don't do it often--let me now. Do you think I haven't realized all along that what you said of me is true--that I have done nothing? Done nothing but succeed smugly in keeping myself in comfort outside the modern economic treadmill! What else could I do? I'm no orator, to convince other people. I haven't any universal panacea to offer! I'm only an inarticulate countryman, a farmer's son, with the education the state gives everyone--who am I, to try to lead? Apparently there was nothing for me to do but ignobly to take care of myself--but now, God be thanked! I have my chance. Someone has been hurt in their infernal squirrel-cage, and I can help--" The older man was looking at him piercingly, as though struck by a sudden thought. He now cut him short with, "You're not deceiving yourself with any notion that she--" The other answered quickly, with a smile of bitter humility: "You have seen her look at me. She does not know whether I am a human being or not--I am to her any strong animal, a horse, an ox--any force that can carry Ariadne safely!" He added, in another tone, his infinitely gentle tone: "I see in that the extremity of her anxiety." The doctor put his hand on the other man's powerful arm. "Do you realize what you are proposing to yourself? You are human. You are a young man. Are you strong enough to keep to it?" Rankin looked at him. Mrs. Sandworth leaned forward. "I am," said Rankin finally. The words echoed in a long silence.