“Well, what have you been trying to do?”

Doris told him, without emotion, what had occurred.  She did not remove her hand from his—­his touch comforted her; held her to the things she knew and loved and trusted.

“And now, David,” she said at last, “I think we have both known that some day this would occur.  We are too good friends to be anything but frank—­I am not afraid, and it is essential that I should know the truth.  The family ogre has caught me—­but it has not conquered me yet!”

“Well, Doris—­it is the first call!” The man’s words hurt like a knife turned upon himself.

“I feared so—­and I am forty-nine.”

“A mere child, my dear, if we deal honestly with the fact.  Your father was fifty-five and might have lived to be seventy if he had stopped in time.  Your grandfather——­”

“Never mind, David, let’s keep to me.  How much longer—­have I?”

“No man on earth could tell you that, my dear, but I hope—­always granting that you will be wise—­that you may count on, say, twenty years.”

They both smiled.  After all, what did it matter?

“And—­what do you suggest I should do—­as a beginning of the—­twenty years?”

“Close this house, Doris, and start another kind of existence—­somewhere else.”

“Why, David—­I must bring the girls out, you know.  They must not be told—­of this.”

“They need be told only what you choose to have them know, but as to the bringing-out farce—­that’s rot!  Those girls will get out by one door or another, never fear. You are to be kept in—­that’s the important thing at present.”

“Dear old David!” Doris’s eyes dimmed as she looked at the kind face bending over the hands lying limp, now, on her lap.  She noticed that there was white on the temple where the dark hair had turned; the heavy shoulders were bent permanently.  She longed to do something more for David during the next—­twenty years!

“You must not give way, Doris.  A change is good for us all.”  Martin noted the tears in the eyes holding his own, but he did not understand their source.

“I am afraid the girls will be so disappointed,” was what Doris said.

“Pampered creatures!  It will do them good.  But Nancy will love it and Joan can kick the traces if she wants to—­that will do her good.”  Martin leaned back and crossed his legs in the old boyish way.

“What will Nancy love, David?”

“Why, the out-of-door country life.  She’s that kind.  Flowers and animals and quiet.”

“Country life?” Doris sat up.  “But, David, I could not stand country life, myself.  I love to look at the country, listen to it, play with it—­but I am a citizen to the core.  It is simply impossible.  One has to be born with the country in his blood to be part of it.”

It was like pleading with the stern expression on Martin’s face.

He was not apparently listening, and when he spoke he carried on his own thought: