She placed him back between his covers and closed the door gently behind her. The spring in her heart was hurting her. She knew not what to do, where to go, in order to dispel this subtle restlessness. The children below were content without her. It was almost time to be cooking supper. But she felt nauseous at the prompting. In her own house, in her own hall, she stood, hesitant, palpitant, unnerved and ill-at-ease. What was come over her? She sought refuge, back in her room. She flung herself face down, upon her bed--as a girl might, and as no woman should need to. And there she lay, not thinking, scarcely feeling, luxuriously adrift in an element that was both hot and cold. But this could not last. She must start supper going; she must put Thomas and Adelaide to bed. She did. * * * * * Sarah went to her husband in the parlor. He sat at the table, roughly fingering a batch of papers. Business had gone better this spring. But it had failed to pace the stride of outlay. The drain of the Brooklyn Hospital had sunk Josiah deeper than ever into debt. And he was brooding. No word of kindness or of fellowship came from him, those days. The seeming purpose of fate to meet him and the rise in his affairs with always another blow appealed to the man’s instinct for irony. It was to him as if he were playing a game, playing it well, yet destined to go down before stacked cards. Everything seemed to point to an invidious combination. The very fact of his increasing business, with the gall it added, seemed proof to him that an Intelligence was at work against him. His strokes of fortune made him suffer, since they did no good. His wife’s serene behavior made him suffer, since his emotions balked at acknowledging or rewarding it. The fact of his power always to stem a tide, always to go on barely, made him suffer, since it prevented what in his mood had seemed a luxury--the final breaking-up, the sureness of an End.