The younger man stood up. "I am going to see a lawyer," he announced in a quiet voice of return to an everyday level. "Until then, we have all more to think over than to talk about, it seems to me." * * * * * After he had left them the brother and sister did not speak for a time. Then the doctor said, irritably: "Julia, say something, for Heaven's sake. What did you think of what he said?" "I didn't hear what he said," answered Mrs. Sandworth; "I was looking at him." "Well?" urged her brother. "He is a good man," she said. A sense that she was holding something in reserve kept him silent, gazing expectantly at her. "How awfully he's in love with her!" she brought out finally. "That's the whole point. He's in love with her! All this talk about 'ways of living' and theories and things that they make so much of--it just amounts to nothing but that he's in love with her." "Oh, you sentimental idiot!" cried the doctor. "I hoped to get some sense out of you." "That's sense," said Mrs. Sandworth. "It hasn't anything to do with the point! Why, as for that, Paul was in love with--" "He was _not_!" cried Mrs. Sandworth, with a sudden loud certainty. The doctor caught her meaning and considered it frowningly. When he spoke, it was to burst out pathetically: "_I_ have loved her all her life." "Oh, you!" retorted his sister, with a sad conclusiveness. Ariadne came running out to them. "I just went to look into Muvver's room, and she was sound asleep! Honest! She was!" The child had heard enough of the doctor's long futile struggles with the horrors of Lydia's sleepless nights to divine that her news was important. She was rewarded with a startled look from her elders. "Come!" said the doctor. They went into the house, and silently to Lydia's half-open door. She lay across the bed as she had dropped down when she came in, one long dark braid hanging to the floor. They stood looking at her almost with awe, as though they were observing for the first time the merciful miracle of sleep. Her bosom rose and fell in long, regular breaths. The drawn, haggard mask that had overlain her face so many months was dissolved away in an utter unconsciousness. Her eyelashes lay on a cheek like a child's; her mouth, relaxed and drooping, fell again into the lines they had loved in her when she was a little girl. She looked like a little girl again to them. Mrs. Sandworth's hand went to her throat. She looked at her brother through misty eyes. He closed the door gently, and drew her away, making the gesture of a man who admits his own ignorance of a mystery. CHAPTER XXXIV THROUGH THE LONG NIGHT