"You'll be going home, I suppose?" he said.
"Yes; and I wish to gracious you were the one who had to face my mother and sister. They're all for peace, you know--peace at any old price."
"Tell them we're going to have peace if we are obliged to fight for it. And don't let them swing you. If we back down now we may as well go into court and ask for a receiver. Good-night."
Though he had not betrayed it, Griswold was fiercely impatient to get away. One tremendous question had been dominating all others from the earliest moment of the morning awakening, and all day long it had fed upon doubtings and uncertainty. Would Andrew Galbraith recover from the effects of the drowning accident? At first, he thought he would go to his room and telephone to Margery. But before he had reached the foot of Shawnee Street he had changed his mind. What he wanted to say could scarcely be trusted to the wires.
Twice before he reached the gate of the Grierson lawn he fancied he was followed, and twice he stepped behind the nearest shade-tree and tightened his grip upon the thing in his right-hand pocket. But both times the rearward sidewalk showed itself empty. Since false alarms may have, for the moment, all the shock of the real, he found that his hands were trembling when he came to unlatch the Grierson gate, and it made him vindictively self-scornful. Also, it gave him a momentary glimpse into another and hitherto unmeasured depth in the valley of stumblings. In the passing of the glimpse he was made to realize that it is the coward who kills; and kills because he is a coward.
He had traversed the stone-flagged approach and climbed the steps of the broad veranda to reach for the bell-push when he heard his name called softly in the voice that he had come to know in all of its many modulations. The call came from the depths of one of the great wicker lounging-chairs half-hidden in the veranda shadows. In a moment he had placed another of the chairs for himself, dropping into it wearily.
"How did you know it was I?" he asked, when he could trust himself to speak.
"I saw you at the gate," she returned. "Are you just up from the Iron Works?"
"I have been to dinner since we came up-town--Raymer and I."