Sitting up in his bed with night all about him RoBards would enact some grisly murder, often while Patty slept at his side unheeding the furies that lashed her husband and mocked him for his forgiveness like Christ’s of the woman brought before him. In the restored innocence of sleep, Patty’s face was like a little girl’s with its embroidery of her curls, one shoulder curved up, a round white arm flung back above her head, her bosom slowly lifting and falling with her soft breath. Sometimes as he gazed at her, his heart welled with pity for her; at other times he was frantic to commit murder because of her. But the big tree at the window would try to quiet him like an old nurse; it would go “Hush, hush!” The house would seem to sigh, to creak as if its bones complained. And it, too, would counsel him, “No! no!” The ferocity of such debates would wear him out more than a prolonged contest in court, and he would sink back and draw sleep over him as a black blanket of respite from thought. At other times when Patty was gracious and full of laughter, when she was in a mood to be a child with her children and play with them, there would be a heavenliness in life that made RoBards cry aloud within himself, “Thank God I kept the secret.” By and by there was a child again at Patty’s little breast—the fifth in number, the third alive. She had resigned herself to motherhood now. She nursed the babe and took all the care of it without complaint. She met RoBards at night when he came up from town, with stories of the wonderful things the new son had achieved or the older babes had said. It pleased him quaintly to find his wild, restless Patty becoming a subdued and comfortable matron, telling unimportant anecdotes importantly. She kept her grace and her beauty and she could never grow slattern; but she was maternal now to her marrow. Regarding the deep peace of his country family, RoBards was profoundly glad that he had forgone the swift passionate delights of revenge. If he had slain Chalender or published the scandal in the courts, Patty would not have been his now. That child whom she had named after himself, David Junior, would have been doomed to an unhonored name. This house would have been pointed to as a monument of scandal. It would be neglected, empty, haunted. The neighbors never dreamed of the hidden shame. They said: “Nothin’ ever happens up your way. You’re one lucky man.”