She looked at him with a sense of helpless inability either to aid or condemn. Every conscious fibre in her championed his cause, except her reason. How could this sick man hope to keep Holly against the world?
"I've told you what I did; I took him away from her. 'Tell Mrs. Masterson that Holly has gone with his father,' I said. That was all. I carried him to my car and drove straight here. You will keep him for me? You and Tony? I have got to go; to get back and make my last fight."
Elsie gently set down the baby. She saw what Masterson in his dazed and selfish absorption overlooked: that she and Anthony were to be drawn into a conflict surely evil for them. Mrs. Masterson must resent this, and call on the law to undo the kidnapping. She herself and Anthony would be dragged from their happy obscurity, their long honeymoon ended. More menacing still, Anthony's position in his father's factory would be discovered and exploited by the newspapers, with the probable result that Mr. Adriance would end that situation by dismissing the impromptu employee.
But she never even thought of sending Masterson away. The baby hands that grasped her dress grasped deeper at her heart. Also, this man in need was Anthony's friend and one to whom he owed atonement for a wrong contemplated, if not committed.
"Of course we will keep him," she promised, kindly and naturally. "But you must stay, too. You are not well and must rest for a while--it is absurd to speak of fighting when you can scarcely stand. Sit there, in that arm-chair. Presently Anthony will come home, then we will have supper and talk of all this."
The serene good-sense calmed and cooled his fever. Sighing, he relaxed his tenseness of attitude.
"I must go," he repeated, but without resolution.
For answer she drew forward the chair. He sank into it and lay rather than sat among its cushions, passive before her firmness.
Elsie moved about the matter at hand with her unfailing practicality. She took off Holly's wraps and improvised a high-chair by means of a dictionary and a pillow. To an accompaniment of gay chatter she made ready her small guest's evening meal, tied a napkin under the fat chin and superintended the business of supping. Hunger and sleep were contending before the bread and milk and soft-boiled egg were finished. Afterward, Elsie carried a very drowsy little boy into her room and made him a nest in her antique-shop four-posted bed. Masterson looked on, mutely attentive to every movement of the two as if some dramatic interest lay in the simple actions. When Elsie returned from the sleeping baby, he abruptly spoke: