She heard steps on the stairs, voices, the opening of her mother's door. Someone was mounting heavily. She held her breath. Was her mother coming to speak to her? No, she had passed, very slowly, into the opposite room. Her father was speaking; there was a strange, flapping sound--that was Bessie's felt slippers wearing her stockings into holes. She seemed to be in a hurry. Were they all going to bed? Was it so late? And, if so, why had not Grace returned? In a little while there was a swift, light step, and Grace entered. "Terry, where are you? On the bed? Get up quickly. Where are the matches? Mother's ill, and you must go for the doctor." "Ill?" Theresa blinked in the gaslight. "It's her heart." "Her heart," Theresa repeated dully. "Yes, be quick! I must go and see to her." "Is it late?" "Only nine o'clock." "Nine!" Theresa slipped from the bed, felt for her slippers, and ran out, hatless, into the quiet streets. She was accompanied by the fear of death. She was a fast runner, and she made little noise in her thin shoes, but more silently ran that fear. She saw it with a mocking face and claw-like hands. Peremptorily she summoned the doctor, appearing like a dishevelled sprite to the startled maid, and sped again down the garden path. The shrubs were dark and thick and they rustled as she passed. She found the front-door open when she reached home, and her father hovering in the hall. "My child! No hat!" He took her hands and she yielded them gladly, dropping her head to his shoulder. "I did it," she whispered. "She isn't going to die, is she?" "We do not know. We do not know." "I did it," she repeated. He patted her shoulder. "Hush. Don't think about yourself. See if Grace wants you." Slowly she went upstairs. She could not have analyzed her pain, it had too many parts, but perhaps the sharpest of them was her sense of slight. She confessed, tacitly asked forgiveness, and he bade her not think about herself! Her next thought was not formed, but it lived in her, telling her that he should have shown gratitude for the killing of her pride. She drove the nails into her palms. He had thought nothing of the confession which, to her, had pulsed with more than repentance, which had been quick with drama. He was blind or callous, and the hot colour of shame ran up her face, but faded as she reached her mother's door. She turned the handle softly, and stepped over the threshold into a dim, hushed room, full of the mystery of sickness. Grace was at the washstand, moving crockery and bottles without noise, a conscious control of the situation plain in her bearing and in the air of the room which had been miraculously converted into tidiness.