Dosia, on the bed by Redge’s crib, went softly after a while into the other room, and saw that Lois at last slept, though she herself could not. Each time that she saw Girard he seemed more and more a stranger, so far removed was he from her dream of him; through all his softness, his gentleness, she felt the streak of hardness, if nobody else did—though Mr. Cater, she remembered now, had spoken of it too—that the fires of adversity had molded. Perhaps no man could have worked up from the cruel circumstances of his early days without that hardening streak to uphold him. She divined, with some surprising new power of divination, that in spite of all his strong, capable dealing with actualities and his magnetic drawing of men, for the inner conduct of his own life he was shyly dependent on odd, deeply held theory—theory that he had solitarily woven for himself. She felt impersonally sorry for him, as for a boy who must be disappointed, though he was nothing to her. Yet, as Dosia lay there in the dumb stretches of the night, her tired eyes wide open, close to Redge’s crib, with his little hot hand clinging to hers, the mere fact of Girard’s bodily presence in the house, down-stairs, seemed something overpoweringly insistent; she couldn’t get away from it. It gave her, apparently, neither pleasure nor pain; it called forth no conscious excitement as had been the case with Lawson—unless this strange, rarefied sense was a higher excitement. This consciousness of his presence was, tiresomely enough, something not to be escaped from; it pulsed in every vein, keeping her awake. She tried to lose it in the thought of Lois’ great trouble, of this weighting, pitiful mystery of Justin’s absence—of what it meant to him and to the household; she tried to lose it in the thought of Lawson, with the prayer that always instinctively came at his name. Nothing availed; through everything was that wearing, persistent consciousness of Girard’s bodily presence down-stairs. If it would only fade out, so that she might sleep, she was so tired! The clock struck two. A voice spoke from the other room, sending her to her feet instantly: “Dosia?” “Yes, Lois, dearest, I’m here.” “Has any word come from Justin?” “No.” Lois shivered. “I think, when Redge wakes up next, you’d better give him a drink of water, he sounds so hoarse. I’ve used all I brought up. Do you mind going down to get some more? I would go myself, but I can’t slip my arm from under baby; he wakes when I move. Here is the pitcher.” “Yes,” said Dosia, stopping for a moment to pull the coverlet tenderly over Lois, before stepping out into the lighted hall.