Chapter XVI: Mr. Sable Starts Something

What Mr. Sable had counted on was that Gage, once away for the Convention, with his wife travelling with him, would stay away for a week or so. In any case, he had taken matters rather summarily into his own hands in the case of Freda Thorstad. The presence of the girl in the office was to him like an open scandal. He knew that she had to get out of the office and the time to get her out was while Gage was away. Of course Flandon might raise trouble when he came back but there would be no scene with the girl and he could put it flatly and finally that amours had to be conducted outside of the office if at all. He was extremely correct and secure in his own position and he felt he was most delicate.

So he was at the office a little earlier than usual the morning after Gage left for the Convention. Freda was at her desk sorting the first batch of mail. She looked very neat and capable, in her white blouse open a little at the throat, her thick golden red hair pulled back smoothly from her forehead, and her head industriously bent over her letters.

“Will you come in my office for a moment, Miss Thorstad?”

Freda followed him obediently. He closed the door and, taking his arm chair, left her standing a little dubiously before him.

“Miss Thorstad,” he said, “I think--er--that it will be best for you to sever your connection with this office.”

His tone, wholly disapproving, weighted with meaning, told his reasons with almost comic flatness.

Freda’s brow contracted and she looked sharply at him. Then she laughed. A brazen laugh, he would have said. Truly a laugh with no more fear or care or apprehension in it than the laugh of any child who comes upon something ridiculous.

Mr. Sable frowned. She was a hussy, he thought. Might try to bulldoze him a little--he became increasingly stern.

“I have no desire to go into our reasons for this but I think it will be best for you to simply leave at once. You may find the work too heavy for you. I am sure you understand that no office of this kind could take the situation differently.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for me to wait until Mr. Flandon’s return?” she asked.

He had feared that.

“Surely you understand that your presence here is embarrassing to Mr. Flandon,” he said sharply.

If she had guessed what he suspected she might have contended. But all that he said struck her as true. She evidently was being gossiped about and if it did make it embarrassing for Mr. Flandon--Perhaps that was why he had been so over courteous, to conceal a deep embarrassment.

“Very well, Mr. Sable,”--she straightened her shoulders a little--“I shall not go on with my work here.”

“Exactly.” With victory so easily accomplished, Mr. Sable became different, adept at smoothing things over. “Of course when a young lady cannot typewrite, an office like this has hardly the right kind of work--”

“I know that. I told Mr. Flandon that at the start.”

“Mr. Flandon being absent, I will give you a check for this week’s work.”

“I’ve done only one day’s work, Mr. Sable. It is only”--she calculated--“two and a half dollars.”

She took his check for that--he did not dare press the point--and left his office. Mr. Sable smoothed his little white mustache, straightened his papers with the air of having done a good day’s work already, and pressed the buzzer for his own secretary.

It was only half past nine o’clock. Freda got her hat and coat from the tiny dressing-room. Her desk was in order and there was no use in fussing over it. She wanted to get out into the clean air. The pompous little lawyer’s insinuations while they did not strike deep enough to insult her, made her feel soiled and dirty.

Cele followed her into the dressing-room.

“Where you going?”

“Going out to look for a job.”

“He let you out?”

“That’s the substance of his message.”

“Well--I call that--” Cele stopped, a veil of thought coming over her eyes. “Look here,” she went on, “if there’s anything I can do--” She stressed the last word violently, as if the need for action pressed upon her.

“Not a thing.”

“You aren’t going back to--what-you-may-call-it? The place you came from?”

“Mohawk? No--mother’s coming here in a day or two. I’ll wait, and look for a job.”

“A job,” said Cele, reflectively, “don’t worry too much, will you? Say--I’ll be around to see you to-night. I think it’s rotten.”

Freda went out, wondering if the slanderous tongues had found even Cele’s ear.

But she did not linger on thoughts of her dismissal. She was sorry to leave Mr. Flandon so, but after all he knew and understood and the whole business was so temporary anyway. Gregory should be back any day now--and they would go away and never think of such ugliness any more. It was like her that no thought of personal justification, of setting people straight on the gossip, ever entered her head. She wanted to shake them off--that was all. She wanted to get away into light and clearness and cleanness with Gregory. And it seemed to her that merely being with Gregory would make an atmosphere like that.

She had received no letter from him in five or six days now and she missed one sadly. She needed that written touch of vigor and sweetness which set her days aflame with happiness. Especially now, with the knowledge that she was probably to bear his child. The lack of an address so she might send him that delightful information was distressing. She could have reached him through his lecture bureau but she had a dread of the letter going astray if it were not sent directly to him. Not a word or thought of resentment did she allow to penetrate her love. She kept herself free from that. It was harder to keep fear away.

She was strolling along, passing through the shopping district, now and then stopping to look idly at something in the window when she heard herself greeted. Looking up she saw Ted Smillie. He was quietly affable and there seemed no escape from speaking to him.

“How are you, Freda?” he asked calmly.

She resented his use of her name though he had come to using it before their disastrous evening.

“Quite well,” she said, and looked at him evenly, waiting for him to pass her.

He did not pass. He lingered, showing in his face the return of that avid attraction which he had felt so strongly before. She was thinner than she had been when he had seen her last and the shadows under her eyes made her face more delicate--more interesting!

“I wanted to see you again and luck’s come my way. You know that I did call on you the next day at the Brownleys’ and found you’d gone. I’m afraid I acted like an awful fool that night. Didn’t I?”

“Worse than that.”

“But it truly wasn’t my fault. I had been drinking. I know I can’t stand the stuff. And you made me quite lose my head.”

She reflected that of course it hadn’t been his fault as much as Barbara’s. And not knowing or dreaming that he was the agency which had violated the privacy of those two days at the Roadside Inn, she did not persist in great resentment. She disliked him of course but she was very idle and ready for distraction.

He went on talking, eagerly.

“It’s been on my mind ever since. I hated to let you think I was like that. Look here, Freda, I’ve got a free afternoon. Come in and have a cool drink somewhere with me--won’t you?”

“I don’t think so,” said Freda.

“Please.”

“I might hurt your reputation,” she said, with a scornful little laugh. “I understand I’m causing a lot of talk among your friends.”

“They always talk about every one--especially if a girl has the courage not to be conventional--”

She did not trust him in the least. Nor did she like him. It was sheer ennui which made her consent. She needed company.

They went to the tea room of a hotel, a cool place, furnished with abundant white willow and great palms. Freda had not been in such a place before and she, as ever, was esthetically responsive to the oasis of comfort and coolness it made in the sweltering city. Ted ordered for her--a tall glass of cool Russian tea with mint leaves and thin lettuce edged sandwiches. His solicitude for her comfort dulled the edge of whatever resentment she had towards him--she had never bothered to preserve much.

“And what are you doing? Did I hear you were working--like all modern women?”

“Working I was--like all women who need the money,” she answered, “but I’m not working now.”

“You’re not going back to Mohawk?”

She remembered part of his proposition that she need not go back to Mohawk, made some weeks ago, glancing at him guardedly, thinking with a certain amount of interest that this was the very young man who had made suggestions which should have barred him permanently from her presence. Here she was, taking his iced tea. Things were queer. She didn’t even feel particularly angry at him. There wasn’t any use pretending false rigors.

“I don’t know,” she said, as she had said before.

“I’m glad you left the Brownleys’ anyhow. Are you living with other friends?”

“No--I’ve a room by myself.”

Obviously he liked that and the visible signs of his liking amused her.

“Can I come to see you once in a while?”

“Oh, no, indeed. I shouldn’t in the least like you as a caller.”

He was undisturbed.

“I’ll have to make you change your mind somehow.”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, delicately, in negation.

“Do you know how much I’ve thought about you since that night?” he asked, bending a little closer to her.

“How much?”

“All the time.”

She pushed her glass away from her.

“Don’t be silly. I’m not a half-wit, Ted. I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You know quite well you’re engaged to Barbara Brownley. Her mother told Miss Duffield that.”

His face darkened.

“Well,” he said, “I thought you were above a lot of silly conventions.”

She smiled serenely. “I am.”

“Then--just because a man is engaged to a woman is no reason why he should never speak to any one else.”

“No--that would put a pretty high penalty on such things, wouldn’t it?”

“People are getting over their old fashioned notions about such things. Men and women aren’t simpletons as they used to be, you know. We’re regarding these things in a modern way. More like the French,” he said largely.

“The French--oh, yes,” said Freda, gravely, “you mean having wives and mistresses too. I’ve often wondered if the French couldn’t sue us for libel for the things provincial Americans think about them.”

He flushed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Gracious, no.” But he knew from her laugh that she was. “Why should I make fun of you?”

She was enjoying herself. She felt so secure, so strong. It was fun to bait this temperish young man, make him scuttle about for phrases which had no effect on her at all.

“Anyway you know how I feel.” He pushed aside the glasses and plates between them and bent himself over the tiny table towards her. She sat back in her chair promptly.

“You know how I feel,” he persisted, “I never cared for a girl as I’ve cared for you.”

“Then,” said Freda, with an air of great simplicity, “why not ask me to marry you?”

He threw out his hands in a theatrical gesture of despondency.

“I’m tied hand and foot. This marriage of mine has been cooked up by our families. It’s all arranged for us.”

“I know,” said Freda wisely, “as in France.”

He glanced sharply at her.

“But,” said Freda, “the modern way is not to let your parents put that sort of thing over. Truly. One simply says, ‘Mother--I will wed the girl of my choice.’”

“You are making fun of me.”

“Well--who wouldn’t?” Freda collapsed into a laugh. “Here I sit, listening to you make the funniest clandestine love in the world. You feel you’ve got to do it--to uphold your reputation as a--Frenchman! And if you slipped into a serious situation you’d be aghast. You don’t care a thing about me and you know it.”

“Ah, don’t I?” He looked for a moment as if he did.

“You probably care a little about corrupting me. Now look here, Ted, please stop talking such nonsense. You can’t shock me and it’s pretty hard to insult me--I am a little ashamed of not being more insulted--but you probably could make me very angry by persisting in trying to involve me in petty vice. In the first place I don’t like it. In the second place, if I ever went in for vice, it would be on a larger scale than you could dream of. I haven’t the slightest intention of--being French! You’d better go along and make love to Bob Brownley. She’ll bring some excitement into your life, I think. The reason I’m not more angry with you is that you were, indirectly, the cause of the greatest bit of luck that ever happened to me.”

“What?”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you. But I’m awfully obliged for the tea--truly. It set me up. Shall we go?”

He was not so easy to repulse. He got up and pulled his chair around to her side of the table.

“Freda,” he tried to take her hand, “if I gave up Bob would you let me see you?”

“I wouldn’t if you gave up the world.”

She rose a little impatiently, feeling that this was going too far, and started for the door of the dining-room.

“At least you’ll tell me where you live?” he pressed her. “Let me go home with you now.”

“Don’t you have to work in the middle of the afternoon?”

“Nobody’s working much. It’s too hot.”

“Then go play with Barbara. I’ve other things to do.”

Possibly it was the heat and the sense of effort which got nowhere that made Ted’s face intense and angry. He saw her about to slip away again.

“You can’t go like this, Freda, I’ve only just found you.”

“You’d better let me,” answered Freda, “because I see Maud Dubonnet looking at you and she knows you and obviously isn’t intending to speak to me though I lunched at her house, so you see it will be hot with you when Barbara hears this.”

Against his will Ted looked up and saw Maud truly, with two other girls and three young men coming into the room. They had to pass Ted and Freda as they stood there, discussing. Maud Dubonnet was the only one of the group whom Freda knew. The others all evidently knew Ted and glanced at him with some interest. Maud did not look at Freda. She held her head stiffly as she passed, then said something to the others which made them turn with an attempt at casualness to look at the man and girl. Ted delayed no longer. He followed Freda out.

“You see it doesn’t pay to do things Barbara won’t like. This will get back to her before to-morrow and she won’t be pleasant.”

Ted’s mouth set in an rather ugly line.

“I’ll manage Bob all right.” He looked at Freda. Her face under the plain white hat she wore was mocking, insubordinate, fascinating. “But I want to see you again. To-night?”

“Nonsense. Good-by, Ted. Be good and make your peace with Bob.”

She turned and went in the opposite direction from the one in which they had started, going into the first big department store and retiring to the ladies’ waiting-room where she wrote a letter to her father, and mailed it. Then, having made sure she was rid of Ted she went home. The afternoon dragged along. She read and thought and on an impulse went out again to go to the railway station and get some time tables. She wanted to see just how far Gregory had been away from her when he last wrote.

Each time the postman approached the house there was a leap of her heart. Four times a day he came and each time he brought fresh hope. She would play tricks on herself as she went down to look in the mail box she shared with the people who rented the apartment in which she stayed. Each time she put her hand in the box she hesitated before she looked, then looked quickly as if to catch fate before it tricked her. But it would be an advertisement of a corset firm for Mrs. Miller, an envelope with unmistakable savor of a bill about it, a postcard, a white Louisine envelope with a woman’s handwriting on it. How she hated all the flatness of the Miller mail.

Each envelope she took in her hands seemed to be mischievously metamorphosed into one of these stupid envelopes which represented such dull contact with the outside world. Nothing to do but to go upstairs and read all over again the old messages of love from him--to wear her wedding ring in the privacy of her room--to make endless computations on the presumable date of her child’s birth--to read with unfailing zest and yet slight nausea the rather mawkish pages of “What Every Mother Should Know” which she had shamefacedly but defiantly bought at a book shop, feeling the necessity for some practical knowledge of marriage.

* * * * *

The next day, breaking through her apprehension and her waiting, cutting across her vague fears, came the letter. It lay between an announcement of the opening of a new hair dressing parlor and Mr. Miller’s water and light bill. How could she hope that the other white envelope would be anything more interesting? Then she turned it over and the address stared at her blackly. It was addressed to Mrs. Gregory Macmillan, in an unfamiliar hand, postmarked at the town from which Gregory had last written. Gregory always addressed her letters to Freda Thorstad to avoid any explanations to the Millers. A quick faint fear came over her. She almost crushed the letter as she flew up the stairs and with her back against her door faced the envelope again.

Then steeling her mind and her heart, presenting only outer senses to what blow it might contain, she opened it. The written words made their sense clear, like some amazingly vital story that thrilled every nerve.

“MY DEAR MRS. MACMILLAN:

I obtained your address from your husband and I am writing you to
tell you that he is extremely ill. We have done our best for him
and he has a nurse with him constantly but I feel that you should
come to him if it is at all possible. I do not know what
responsibilities of family may hold you but I think it my duty to
inform you that your husband is very sick. He lectured here on the
fourteenth and the next morning the proprietor of this hotel called
me to attend him. I found him in the first stages of typhoid and
had him removed to a hospital here which is comfortable and where
we have given him every attention. At a time like this his family
should be with him. I regret that I must be the agent of such
distressing news.

Faithfully yours,

L. D. MERRITT, M.D.”

She read it through twice carefully. The thing struck her as quite unreal, although she had speculated on the possibility of his illness.

Then her mind, working reasonably, went on. She thought of trains and money. She had fifty--no forty-nine dollars and seventy-five cents. It wasn’t enough, she knew.

She had the time tables which she had obtained the day before. She studied them, her body held tautly, her face calm, showing a control which had come unconsciously. She could leave at three fifteen that afternoon. She’d have to change trains at midnight. She’d get there at noon next day. There was money. She must have money. No one to get it from unless she wired her father--better not--Miss Duffield away--Mr. Flandon away--Cele had none. She thought even of Ted Smillie. Better not--she’d pawn something. That was what people did when they needed money.

Like most girls she had a small collection of semi-precious jewelry--nothing of great value. She opened the little mock-ivory box on her dressing table and considered the contents carefully. Then she closed it, put on her hat and stuck the box in her pocket.

Pawning was unlike any experience she had ever had and not as exciting as books had led her to believe. She felt no shame--only a vague hostility to the pawnbroker. She hated his having so obviously the best of the transaction. He was scornful in her array of articles to sell--the gold bracelet that had cost her father thirty-five dollars--the little one carat diamond ring that had been her mother’s--the opal ring--the seal ring--the little silver locket.

In the end he gave her thirty-three dollars, and with the money in her hands she immediately got his point of view. She had exchanged a lot of things which meant little to her for the boundless power of thirty-three dollars which added to forty-nine made eighty-two.

She bought a ticket to Fairmount, Montana. It cost her twenty-eight dollars and sixty-four cents. She put it in her purse and went home, a splendid sense of action stirring her.

It took her a very short time to pack her bag. There remained two hours before the train. She spent it sitting in her room and letting the knowledge of what she was doing penetrate her mind. It occurred to her that she should let some one know where she was going but in the face of Gregory’s illness it seemed even less possible to confide the news of her marriage. That was to have been a glorious revelation to a few people. She could not turn it into tragedy, so she decided to tell no one.

To her father she wrote a letter.

Yet even to him she could not tell the facts. It seemed now when circumstances seemed to imperil her secret that she clutched it even more tightly to herself. She could not bear the thought of comment breaking in like a destructive barrage on the secret glory and beauty she cherished. In her absorption she did not think much of consequences or possible worry for any one. Only as she told Mrs. Miller that she wanted to pay up for her week and that she had been called out of town, did it occur to her from a comment of Mrs. Miller’s, that her mother was coming in a day or two. The complication puzzled her--then she overrode it boldly. It was one of the things that had to be. So she wrote a note for her mother and entrusted it to Mrs. Miller. It was only a few lines to tell her that she had left the city--“I’m sorry that I can’t be more definite about my plans. There’s nothing to worry you, mother. It’s quite all right and I’m not doing anything I shouldn’t. So please don’t worry about me. Only trust me, won’t you? I know you will.” She sent her love and for all her assurances on paper that she knew her mother would trust her she sealed it with a dubious look.

In the letter to her father she was, if not more informative, at least more expansive.

It was incoherent, reassuring, happy, sad--the kind of letter that carries with it great fear to the one who reads it and who sees how delicate the balance is on which the future is being weighed.

Freda mailed the note to her father, left the one for her mother with Mrs. Miller and went to the station. Almost before she knew it the long train, with a jerk of its loose hung body had gathered itself together and moved out of the yards through the scattering, blackened railroad district. She watched the little houses and let her mind sink into a blur of remembrance and anticipation. She was going to Gregory. No more waiting for letters, no more dreams. Whatever it was that was to come, it was reality--something to feel and to do--not to wait for.

She slipped her wedding ring on her finger and displayed her hand a little absurdly on the edge of the window casing. Marvelous symbol--that ring, she thought. Too bad that people had come to regard it so disdainfully. How ill it must have been treated to have sunk into such disrepute. Across the aisle of the day coach she saw a like ring on the hand of a woman. It was a fleshy hand and the coarse pink skin pushed itself up on either side of the encircling band but Freda felt kinship and friendliness. With this unknown woman, with the unintelligent face she almost felt it possible to converse intimately--as if she might cross to her and say, “I am Mrs. Gregory Macmillan. Are you going far?”

When the shadows fell thick across the prairie and a white-coated waiter, a shade more important in his manner that he had been in passing through the Pullmans, had intrigued a fair number of the day-coach passengers into the diner, Freda rose a little stiffly. Her chin had red marks on it where she had cupped it in her hand for so long and there were streaks of coal dust under her eyes. She made a perfunctory and inadequate attempt to look presentable and faced a new adventure. She had never eaten on a train in her life.

The warm bustle and luxury of the place stirred her senses and brought her out of her lonely rhapsody into an appreciation of what went on around her. The adventure spirit came to the surface. Freda Thorstad--sitting at a tidy table in a dining-car, on the way to her husband. There was no disloyalty to Gregory’s illness that she could not resist the enchantment of shining dishes which looked like silver and warm and savory smells and smiling, interesting travelers, with above and around it all the clatter and rush of the train, moving on to a hundred destinations, a hundred tragedies and comedies and romances. Her thoughts at least admitted no staleness as a possibility.

The meal stood out in her memory. She never forgot it. Tentatively she ordered, tea, biscuits and lamb chops. When the lamb chops came they lay on a platter with little sprigs of parsley offering them up and made her very hungry. They looked delightful but inadequate. She ate hungrily, for these last few days she had had little food.

Four--five--dragging hours. She bought a magazine with a flaring girl on its cover and read avidly, her mind sinking into its soporific fiction with weariness, getting respite from her own sharp and vivid thoughts.

The conductor came to tell her that this was her station. He lifted her heavy bag for her and carried it to the foot of the steps of the coach.

Then came the excitement of the swoop and pause of the Flyer. Freda was bundled aboard, hat awry, nervously watching for her bag, taken from her hands by some one, porter or conductor. The curtains swung from all the berths. The porter’s voice was low and lazy. He showed her to lower six--a little cubby hole with curtains drawn aside, revealing the delightful neatness of the berth. Freda knew even less of sleeping on trains than she did of eating there. Awkwardly she managed to undress and crept in between the thick white sheets. In the darkness she lay awake, wondering. Wondering at the rush and sound and the mysteries shrouded behind green swinging curtains. When the train shrieked a signal or stopped lurchingly at some station she pushed up the curtain beside her and, propped on her pillows, lay looking into the night tasting the full delight of inexperience. At last she fell asleep and dreamed of Gregory. It was a frightening dream. He did not know who she was, did not remember her. Towards dawn she pushed her way out of it and woke up to see the rain falling lightly over the even country and to realize that she was begrimed with the coal dust and sticky with heat.

At noon she reached Fairmount and stood in the station looking about her for information. The excitement of the last lap and approaching climax of her journey overcame her fatigue and her eyes were brilliant. She decided to take a taxi to the hospital and chose at random one from a row of disheveled looking “For Hire” machines waiting for the daily debouch of passengers from the Flyer. She climbed in with her bag and closed the shaky door, and the driver started his motor. Freda’s heart was racing. The cab could not go fast enough--nor slow enough. It seemed to her as if she could not bear what might be waiting of joy or sorrow, as if emotion was welling up so strong that it would burst its bounds and overcome her. Through the dusty cab windows she saw Fairmount--ill developed wooden houses with unhealthy looking trees giving little shade--a business district of twelve or fifteen squares with all the machinery of business being conducted as it was at this hour in hundreds of other First National Banks and Gilt Edge Stores and Greek Restaurants and brick office buildings. The cab whisked through it rapidly and came to a section of broader streets where more impressive looking houses of brick or stone appeared at leisurely intervals. A little park with a dusty looking playground adjoining it. A row of apartments and there on the corner where a “Silent Zone” sign, awry and disregarded by a group of boys playing in the street made a vain appeal, was St. Agatha’s Hospital.

Inside the little entry was an office with three or four glass windows, behind which she looked for an informant. A slim, weary looking nun came at last, looking at her from behind steel rimmed glasses without curiosity.

“Macmillan--yes,” she said, “you’re--?”

“I’m his wife.”

The nun accepted the fact simply and as if she yielded Freda certain rights and privileges. Freda felt frightened. She wanted to go into Gregory’s room, kneel down by his bed and tell him to get well. She could see it wasn’t going to be as direct as that.

A buzzing, muffled bell, sounded by the nun, had summoned a nurse, who came into the office thumping heavily on her flat rubber-heeled shoes. She was commissioned to take Freda to the last room in corridor “A”--the “typhoid case.” Freda left her bag in the office and followed the nurse, as she clumped indifferently along. The presence of the nurse bothered her. She wanted to get rid of her--tell her she would go on alone but she did not dare. In corridor “A” the nurse gave her a chair.

“I’ll find his nurse and see if you can see him now.”

“I’m his wife,” said Freda.

The nurse nodded.

“I’ll get the nurse first. She wouldn’t like me to bring any one in without calling her first, you see.” She smiled a little as she explained this convention of the hospital and her smile angered Freda. It seemed an intrusion.

Gregory’s nurse came to her. She held out a friendly hand.

“I’m glad you’ve come. We’re doing our best but I was glad when the doctor wrote you,” she said simply.

Something in her tone pricked the adventure spirit in Freda. It lay flat, useless, a bit of torn balloon. She saw herself as this other woman saw her--a wife, come in time of stress to a sick husband, not a lover to a meeting. That was what she herself had colored her worry with.

Panic seized her. She followed almost resistingly. The door, with its printed “No Visitors” sign was opened softly. She had to accustom her eyes to the darkness. A smell of disinfectants, clean and pungent, came to her. There was the bed, white and high. She made her way towards it falteringly. The head, bandaged for coolness, did not turn to her. It was only when she stood by the bedside that it moved a little, restlessly. He did not look real to her, not like himself.

“Gregory,” she said mechanically.

His fever-dulled eyes looked up at her--lighted. He made one motion permeating his whole body as if he would rise in spite of the quickly detaining hand of the nurse.

“Angel,” he said huskily, “you angel of God--Freda.”

The sound of his voice was a release. All her frightened feelings, reassured, warmed into life, flooded Freda. She sank down by his side, her head bent over the hot hand, which lay so impotent on the gray blanket.