“Never doubt me, Sidney,” she gave him her last word then.

“My back was to the wall until Sidney came.”

Irene Vaisey had confided this sentiment to a yellowing mass of papers which a more ordinary woman might have called her diary. (A lengthy description of the De Lakes boy followed in her fine meticulous hand.)

“What will Vance say about my hands?” Sidney wondered aloud as he was being driven home so that the chauffeur, who was not sure he had heard the question correctly, asked him to repeat it.

Sidney’s hands were covered with teeth marks.

“You need not keep your hands hidden, Sidney,” Vance had said as they were finishing their supper that evening. “I noticed them at once.”

“I belong there, Vance,” his brother raised his voice edgily. “Both Mrs. Vaisey and I are in the same boat, if you ask me.”

Vance put down his knife and fork with a bang.

“All right, then,” Sidney began shamefacedly. “My hands are bitten from when I feed Gareth . . . He can’t feed himself . . .”

A look of almost lordly disgust came over Vance’s flushed face.

“Look, Vance . . . It’s what I want to do . . . It quiets me down . . .”

“Getting bit quiets you down?”

“I’m helping someone.”

“Does he know you’re helping? Does he know anything? I ask you. Of course he doesn’t. You might as well feed a corpse . . .”

“Vance, don’t say anymore. . . . I think you are angry with me really because I told you I was . . . that way . . .”

“I’m not at all,” Vance interrupted him passionately. “I don’t believe you’re queer anyhow, or gay, or whatever they call it . . . Prison made you think that . . .”

“Oh, Vance, Vance . . . I am, I am, I am.”

Suddenly Sidney sobbed and put his hands over his eyes so that the bite marks at last were clearly put up for show.

Vance excused himself, took his plate, and walked to the kitchen. He let the water faucet run full force so that he would not hear anything from the dining room.

When he reentered the room, Sidney had taken his hands down from his eyes and was looking blindly at his bread pudding which had been made that day by Dr. Ulric’s cook.

“Sidney, it’s all right,” Vance said, and went over to his brother and put his hand on his shoulder. “Forgive my bad temper.”

“It’s the only thing I’m good for, Vance . . . To feed a dead boy.”

At this Vance turned his own face away, and pressed his fingers hard into Sidney’s shoulder, allowing finally his hand to rest there.

Irene was waiting for him the next day, dressed in a billowing gauzelike gown with little blue flowers designed all over it, and a kind of satin bow round her narrow waist. A perfume almost like that of peonies came bearing down upon Sidney as he took her hand.