"It is very good even as it is, now." But he rebelled, manlike, unwilling to be satisfied with mere feeling, desirous of retrieving the irretrievable. "Fool," he muttered, "a weak fool I have been! _I_ have fastened this monstrous chain about you--about _us_." "Let us not think of it----to-night," she murmured, her eyes burning into his face. * * * * * The first gray of the morning was revealing the outlines of the scrub oaks in the field as the two came back to the cottage. Sommers tied his horse to a fence-post at the end of the lane, and went in to warm himself from the chill of the night air. Mrs. Preston prepared some coffee, while he built a fire in the unused stove. Then she drew up her work-table before the fire and poured out the coffee into two thick cups. As there was no cream, she remarked with a little smile, "It is very late for after-dinner coffee!" She moved and spoke with extreme caution, not to disturb Mrs. Ducharme and Preston, who became excitable when awakened suddenly. They drank their coffee in silence, and Sommers had stood up to leave. "I shall come very soon," he was saying, and her face responded with a little smile that lit up its sober corners and hard lines. Suddenly it grew rigid and white, and her eyes stared beyond the doctor into the gloom of the room. Sommers turned to follow her gaze. The door moved a little. There was some one outside, peering in. Sommers strode across the floor and threw the door open. In the dim light of the dawn he could see Preston, half dressed. He had slunk back from the door. "Come in," the doctor ordered sternly. The man obeyed, shambling into the room with an air of bravado. "Oh, it's you, is it, doctor?" he remarked quite naturally, with an air of self-possession. "Haven't seen you for a long time; you don't come this way often, at least to see _me_," he added insinuatingly, looking at his wife. "I heard voices, and I thought I would come down to see what my wife was up to. Women always need a little watching, doctor, as you probably know." He walked toward the table. As he stood there talking in a sneering voice, in full flesh, shaved and clean, he certainly did not look like a man stricken with paresis. Yet the doctor knew that this fitful mood of sanity was deceitful. The feeble brain had given a momentary spurt. "Coffee?" Preston continued, as the others remained silent. "Haven't you got anything better than coffee? Where have you been, Mrs. Preston and Dr.--?" Mrs. Preston tremblingly poured out some coffee and handed it to him. The act enraged the doctor. It seemed symbolical. Preston threw the cup to the floor. "None of your rot," he shouted. "I bet _you_ have had something more than coffee, you--" he glared at his wife, his limbs trembling and twitching as the nervous irritation gained on him. Sommers sprang forward. "Go upstairs," he commanded sternly. "You are not fit to be here."