"John Henry found this in a New York paper and brought it to me. He thought you ought to see it, though, of course, it may not be so serious as it sounds." "Serious?" repeated Virginia, letting the soapy washrag fall back into the basin while she stretched out her moist and reddened hand for the paper. "It says that the play didn't go very well," pursued her mother guardedly. "They expect to take it off at once, and--and Oliver is not well--he is ill in the hotel----" "Ill?" cried Virginia, and as she rose to her feet the basin upset and deluged Harry's shoes and the rug on which she had been kneeling. Her mind, unable to grasp the significance of a theatrical failure, had seized upon the one salient fact which concerned her. Plays might succeed or fail, and it made little difference, but illness was another matter--illness was something definite and material. Illness could neither be talked away by religion nor denied by philosophy. It had its place in her mind not with the shadow, but with the substance of things. It was the one sinister force which had always dominated her, even when it was absent, by the sheer terror it aroused in her thoughts. "Let me see," she said chokingly. "No, I can't read it--tell me." "It only says that the play was a failure--nobody understood it, and a great many people said it was--oh, Virginia--_immoral!_--There's something about its being foreign and an attack on American ideals--and then they add that the author refused to be interviewed and they understood that he was ill in his room at the Bertram." The charge of immorality, which would have crushed Virginia at another time, and which, even in the intense excitement of the moment, had been an added stab to Mrs. Pendleton, was brushed aside as if it were the pestiferous attack of an insect. "I am going to him now--at once--when does the train leave, mother?" "But, Jinny, how can you? You have never been to New York. You wouldn't know where to go." "But he is ill. Nothing on earth is going to keep me away from him. Will you please wipe Harry's feet while I try to get on my clothes?" "But, Jinny, the children?" "You and Marthy must look after the children. Of course I can't take them with me. Oh, Harry, won't you please hush and let poor mamma dress? She is almost distracted." Something--a secret force of character which even her mother had not suspected that she possessed--had arisen in an instant and dominated the situation. She was no longer the gentle and doting mother of a minute ago, but a creature of a fixed purpose and an iron resolution. Even her face appeared to lose its soft contour and hardened until Mrs. Pendleton grew almost frightened. Never had she imagined that Virginia could look like this. "I am sure there is some mistake about it. Don't take it so terribly to heart, Jinny," she pleaded, while she knelt down, cowed and obedient, to wipe Harry's feet.