He had opened the door just as his father bent and kissed his mother through her hair. He had understood what was being done, and saw that his intervention was too late. He could not save his mother as he had planned. He had to watch her hands blindly fighting for escape, and to abstain from help. He could not rescue his father from that ineffable guilt, or rob him of his divine prerogative. He felt as if he had stumbled upon a parental nakedness and must be forever accursed; but he could move neither forward nor back, to prevent or retreat. The first thing that recalled his power to move was the touch of Aletta, the widow of David Junior. After hours on a rack of sympathy, she had fallen asleep at last with the covers stuffed over her ears to shut out the wails of her husband’s mother, whom she had learned to call “Mamma.” The silence had startled her awake, the strange unusual peace, the deep comfort of the absence of outcry. She had leaped from the bed and hurried barefoot to the room. She encountered Keith rigid on the sill and, glancing past, saw RoBards on the floor. She thought he had fallen asleep from exhaustion. In the bed Patty lay blissful. Aletta whispered: “Poor Mamma! She’s sleeping, isn’t she?” Keith turned as if his neck were of marble and stared with a statue’s eyes. She ran past him and knelt by RoBards. He protected his eyes from the innocent trust in hers by drawing his eyelids over them. Then he hoisted himself to his feet. Life came back to his every member in a searing current. His mind turned traitor to itself, and he felt that he was the most hideous criminal that ever soiled the earth. To make sure that he had not merely dreamed it all, he bent and touched the hand of Patty, set his finger where her pulse had once throbbed like a little heart, felt no stir there; kissed her lips and found them cold. He turned to Aletta and said: “Your mamma—your mamma—our darling is—is——” Aletta screamed and ran to the bed and verified the message, then dashed from the room aghast, crying for help. Soon the house was awake, trembling with feet. Lamps were lighted, children whimpered questions sleepily. Keith took his father’s hand and murmured before anyone else could come: “I saw what you did.” His father recoiled in horror, but Keith said: “I came too late to save you by doing it myself.” RoBards needed, above all things just then, someone to understand, to accept, to approve. He was like a man dying of thirst in a desert when he looks up and sees a friend standing by with water and food and strong arms. He fell into his son’s embrace and clenched him tight, and was clenched tight. There was no need for RoBards to ask his boy to keep this secret. The child was a father and a husband and he understood. They fell back and wrung hands, and RoBards winced as he saw that the backs of his hands were bleeding from the marks of Patty’s fingernails.