“I came to Robbie as fast as I could,” she went on. “I was too late to see any one go out. He was in convulsions, the pitiful baby! In my arms, he died before ever I could call for help. Mr. Dabney come in almost at once and and—Oh, miss, who's to tell his mother?”
I made a move. “I must—” I began, but that cold, steel grip on my wrist coerced me.
“You go, Mary,” said Dabney, “and break it to her carefully. Send for Dr. Haverstock. This—sleep-walker will stay here with me,” he added between his teeth.
Mary, with a little moan, obeyed and went out and slowly away. Paul Dabney and I stood in silence, linked together strangely in that room of death. This was the man I loved. I looked at him.
“You look as innocent as a flower,” he said painfully. “Perhaps this will move you.”
He drew me close to Robbie. He lifted one of the little hands and laid it, still warm, in mine. The small fingers were clenched into a fist, and about two of them was wrapped a strand of red-gold hair.
I fell down at Paul Dabney's feet.
The consciousness of his grip on my wrist, which kept me from measuring my length on the floor, stayed with me through a strange, short journey into forgetfulness.
“Ah!” said Paul Dabney, as I came back and raised my head; “I thought that would cut the ground from under you.”
He quietly untwisted the hairs from the child's clutch, and, still keeping his hold of me, he put the lock into his pocket-book and replaced it in an inner pocket.
“Stand up!” he said.
I obeyed. The blood was beginning to return to my brain, and with it an intolerable sense of outrage. I returned him look for look.
“If I am unfortunate enough to walk in my sleep,” I said quiveringly, “and if, through this misfortune, I have been so terribly unhappy as to cause the death of this poor delicate child, is that any reason, Paul Dabney, that you should hold me by the wrist and threaten me and treat me like a murderess?”
I was standing at my
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