Patty’s comment on this was a domestic sniff: “I suppose he got his feet so wet he’ll catch a terrible cold. Well, I hope he doesn’t come here to be nursed. If he should I’ll send him packing mighty quick, I’ll tell you.” Comment was difficult for RoBards, to whom the mention of Chalender’s mere name was the twisting of a rusty nail in his heart, but his mind leaped with a wonderful meditation: There had been progress not only in the building of the aqueduct but in the laying of a solid causeway under the feet of his family. A sudden storm had swept Patty’s emotions over the dam of restraint and wrecked their lives for a while, but now the damage was so well repaired that she could speak with light contempt of the man who had carried her heart away; she could say that she would shut in his face the door to the home he had all but destroyed. Plainly the house was now her home, too, and Chalender vagrant outside. This thought filled RoBards’ heart with a flood of overbrimming tenderness for Patty. He watched her when she tossed the newspaper to the floor and caught her more exciting baby from its cradle to her breast. She laughed and nuzzled the child and crushed him to her heart and made up barbaric new words to call him. Calling him Davie Junior and little Davikins was in itself a way of making love to her husband by the proxy of their child. The sunlight that made a shimmering aureole about her flashed in her eyes shining with the tears of rapture. RoBards understood one thing at last about her: She wanted someone to caress and to defend. He had always read her wrong. He had offered to be her champion and to shelter her under his strong arms. But Chalender had won her by being hungry for her and by stretching his arms upward to drag her down to him. RoBards felt that he had never really won Patty because he had always been trying to be lofty and noble. She had rushed to him always when he was dejected or helpless with anger; but he had always lost her as soon as he recovered his self-control. He wished that he might learn to play the weakling before her to keep her busy about him. But he could not act so uncongenial a part at home or abroad. CHAPTER XVIII After years of waiting and wrangling, labor conflicts, lawsuits, political battles, technical wars, and unrelenting financial difficulties and desperate expedients, through years of universal bankruptcy, the homely name of the Croton River acquired an almost Messianic significance in the popular heart. There was already a nymph “Crotona” added to the city’s mythology. The thirsty citizens prayed her to hasten to their rescue from the peril of another fire, another plague, the eternal nuisance of going for water or going without.