At her first touch Carter started up wildly and pushed her from him.  “You said you wouldn’t give me up; you promised,” he said.

“I know it, Carter.  I’ll help you, dear.  Don’t be so afraid!  Nobody shall see you.  Put your arm on my shoulder—­there!  Step down a little farther!”

With all her slight strength she supported and helped him, the keen wind blowing her long, thin dress about them both, and the lace falling back from her arms, leaving them bare to the elbow.

Half-way up the walk he broke away from her and cried out:  “I’ll have to go away.  It’s dangerous for me to stay here an hour.”

“Yes, Carter dear, I know.  The doctor says it’s the climate.  We are going early in the morning.  Everything’s packed.  See how cold I am getting out here!  You’ll come in with me now, won’t you?”

Coaxing and helping him, she at last succeeded in getting him to bed.  The blood on his handkerchief told its own story.

She straightened the room, drew a screen between him and the fire, and then went to the bed, where he had already fallen into a deep sleep.  Sinking on her knees beside him, she broke into heavy, silent sobs.  The one grief of her girlhood had been the waywardness of her only brother.  From childhood she had stood between him and blame, shielding him, helping him, loving him.  She had fought valiantly against his weakness, but her meager strength had been pitted against the accumulated intemperance of generations.

She chafed his thin wrists, which her fingers could span; she tenderly smoothed his face as it lay gray against the pillows; then she caught up his hand and held it to her breast with a quick, motherly gesture.

“Take him soon, God!” she prayed.  “He is too weak to try any more.”

At midnight she slipped away to her own room and took off the dainty gown she had put on for Sandy’s coming.

For long hours she lay in her great canopied bed with wide-open eyes.  The night was a noisy one, for there was a continual passing on the road, and occasional shouts came faintly to her.

With heavy heart she lay listening for some sound from Carter’s room.  She was glad he was home.  It was worse to sit up in bed and listen for the wheels to turn in at the gate, to start at every sound on the road, and to wait and wait through the long night.  She could scarcely remember the time when she had not waited for Carter at night.

Once, long ago, she had confided her secret to one of her uncles, and he had laughed and told her that boys would be boys.  After that she had kept things to herself.

There was but one other person in the world to whom she had spoken, and that was Sandy Kilday.  As she looked back it seemed to her there was nothing she had withheld from Sandy Kilday.  Nothing?  Sandy’s face, as she had last seen it, despairing, reckless, hopeless, rose before her.  But she had asked him to come back, she was ready to surrender, she could make him understand if she could only see him.