she was the Devil himself come to ruin Philip and in the end to drag him off to Hell.
"I would have gone back without Philip," she said, "but I couldn't go alone with Swanson, and I felt that the Lord meant me to cleave to Philip and reclaim him. That would be a greater victory than the other."
Emma patted her daughter-in-law's thin hand. "That's right, my dear. He'll go back in the end, and a wife ought to cleave to her husband." But there was in the gesture something of hostility, as there had been in her touching Philip a little while before. It was as if she said, "All the same, while he's here, he belongs to me."
And then Emma, listening, said, "Sh! There he comes now up the stairs."
They both fell silent, as if conscious that he must not know they lay there in the darkness plotting (not plotting, that was a word which held evil implications) but planning his future, arranging what would be best for him body and soul—a thing, they knew, which he could not decide in his present distracted state of mind. They both fell silent, listening, listening, listening to the approaching tread of his feet as they climbed the creaking stairs, now at the turn, now in the upper hall, now passing their door. He had passed it now and they heard him turning the white china knob of the door into the dismal spare-room.
He would think they were both asleep long ago.
They talked for a while longer, until Naomi, worn by the wretched journey in a day-coach and lulled by the warmth with which the great vigorous body of Emma invested the walnut bed, fell asleep, her mouth a little open, for there had never been a surgeon anywhere
