Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/270

262 did move it was to stretch out a hand and stroke the arm of that other rocker as though he touched the arm of a dear friend for assurance and sympathy and comfort.

It was there that Helen Foraker found him. She was well within the room before he was aware that her car had halted below and her feet sounded on the stairs. He started up and summoned a smile.

"You're a ray of sunshine," he said wearily, "in a sunny but dreary day.

"Why, Helen!" looking sharply. "What's—"

She turned away quickly and he moved toward her. But she faced him with a sharp movement and said:

"Nothing much—but trouble!"

Her voice was hard and flat and her eyes were dry but he read that in her which she held back by heroic effort. He stood there a moment.

"Let's have it now—It's hurting you."

And, sitting in his wife's rocker, she told the story of Rowe's coming, in short sentences, hands clasped tightly in her lap, not looking once at her listener. She finished.

"Luke Taylor? His—father?"

"Yes, his father," dully.

The old man leaned closer and put a timid hand on her clenched fists. "And—he knew?"

"He knew, Humphrey—Oh, he knew!"

And with these words the flatness went out of her voice. It was the cry of wretched pain!

An hour later: "I have trusted so few people in my life and of them there has been only one worthy. That is you, Humphrey. I'm depending on you so, now!" His eyes shifted from her face uneasily. "It's make or break