“What do you mean?” He was still looking for subterfuges. “It wasn’t Dora. I knew he would do it some day, and I have tried to keep things that he could do harm with from him. I dreaded this. Something seized him,--something inside him,--and he snatched the knife out of her hand. When I got there, he was looking at the knife. It was--all bloody. Oh, Olaf! He was talking to himself. Then he dropped the knife, and he didn’t seem to remember. He is sleeping now, just as if it had never happened.” “It’s just his fearful temper, Evelyn,” the man answered with an effort. “Dora irritates him, and the thundery air and all. You must pack up and get to the seashore or mountains, where it’s more bracing. He’s just nervous like you and me, only more so, because he’s smaller.” She shook her head wearily. What was the use of self-deception? Hadn’t she watched this habit of rage for months? The child was a part of her; and more than she knew her hand or her foot she knew him. Doctors talked of nerves and diet. But she had seen the storms gather in the child and watched them burst. “No! That is no use, Olaf. I can’t tell myself those things any more and be contented. It is worse!” Simmons was walking up and down the room, hands thrust in his pockets, his face knit over the problem. “All the world like old Oscar,” he muttered, talking to himself. His wife caught up the words greedily. “Old Oscar Svenson, your step-father, the one who brought you up and gave you your education? The one we named him after?” The man nodded half guiltily. “Yes, old Oscar,--the man who gave me everything,--the chance to live, to win you--all.” He resumed his tramp to and fro across the rug, scrupulously refraining from stepping beyond the border. His wife still kept her eyes fixed on him, as though resolved to win from him the secret of the matter. Suddenly she rose and went to him, putting her arms about his neck. “Let me look at you! You have always been a good man, I know. You need not tell me so. This cannot be some terrible revenge for your weakness or wickedness. Have I not held you in my arms? I should have known, if it had been you, for whom our boy suffers.” He kissed her tenderly and led her to a couch; then knelt down beside her. “No, Evelyn--not that. But you must be calm or you will lose your head. You take it too seriously. Oscar is a baby five years old. A five-year-old baby!” “And some day he will commit murder. My God, will you tell me to be quiet and not think of that!” A maid entered the room to announce dinner. [Illustration] III