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He began to mutter at her out of the darkness. Words poured in a strange jumble—"cow" . . . "love . . . Ruthie" . . . "Lord God." Then suddenly came an unmistakable sound. What she had taken for spiritual exaltation was rather physical distress. She heard her father being sick, and at once she felt sorry for him and queerly comforted in her soul. The terror and repulsion that had kept her shuddering from him while she imagined him the vessel of supernatural revelations, passed as he became once more earthly and disgusting, the thing she knew. She knelt down beside him, and touched his head as he rolled and moaned. His breath fanned into her face, and then she understood all. He was drunk.

She had never seen him drunk before, but she had seen other men drunk—for those were the days of empty stomachs and light heads. His behaviour seemed to her a normal reaction to grief for anyone but a Colgate. Perhaps even a Colgate could be forgiven on a night like this—anyway, he had earned her forgiveness by not coming into her world of vision; it seemed now as if he had purposely refrained.