Suddenly she burst into tears. “To fear it always. To think of it day and night. To know that it will come back and seize him some hour when I am not there to help him! O God, why did it come to me? What have I done?” She wept miserably, but when he tried to comfort her she held herself aloof. In their misery they were apart, God dealing with each one in his sorrow separately. “Come, Evelyn!” the husband broke out. “Enough of this! To-morrow we’ll have in a doctor, the best you can find in the city. Maybe he’ll just give him a dose of something and jog his liver.” But his wife, who had been standing beside the window, her forehead pressed against the cold pane, whirled about and faced him. “Did you--ever think--that--you were old Oscar’s son?” “What put that into your head? I told you all I knew--the story old Oscar told me. The whole camp had it the same way.” “That he found you in the frozen cabin of those Vermonters up among the Rockies? Your father and mother had died from cold and hunger, and he found you just in time?” “Yes, that was it.” He hesitated a moment; and then he added honestly: “It must have been so; but I have never found a man who knew anything about the cabin, or those Vermonters. Well, it made no difference--so long as you took me.” “No, it made no matter to me. I said so then when you asked me to marry you.” She waited a moment before adding, “And I say so now. _Nothing_ can make it any different!” “Bless you for that!” But she quickly parted from his kiss. “Tell me about old Oscar. He was rough and bad at times, wasn’t he?” “Yes, rough,--not bad--a fierce customer, a regular Berserker, when he was taken that way,--when he was drunk or in a bad humor. But I don’t want to think of that--he was so good to me, brought me up, gave me my education, taught me my profession himself, and put me in the way of having a happy life. It isn’t right to remember his bad side.” “What do you mean? You never told me he was bad. I thought you meant he was rough and uneducated--that he made his way without a cent from the time he landed in New York. What else do you mean? Was he a bad man? Was he wicked?” The man walked to and fro, disturbed and puzzled. He had stumbled on the worst idea in the world for his wife to feed her imagination upon, and yet he knew that she was aroused--he could not put her off with excuses. He had never told her of his old barbarian benefactor’s darker side, partly because he did not like to mention rude vices to her and partly because it seemed disloyal to his kindest friend. And he was not skilful in handling the truth. What he had to say, he was forced to blurt out plainly.