PART THREE

LIFE

I

That night was one of the most extraordinary that Peter ever spent. Although he was smarting under the terrible injustice of Ranken Townsend's few, but very definite words, and felt like a man who had suddenly come up to an abyss, he took Graham in hand and devoted himself, with all the tenderness of a woman, to this poor boy.

All the way home in the cab Graham had been more or less held down by Kenyon and his brother. His brain was in a wild chaos. The realization that he had been tricked and made a fool of hit him hard. In his first great flush of anger he was filled with an overwhelming desire to go to the apartment in which he had placed Ita Strabosck and smash it up. He wanted to have the satisfaction of breaking and ripping apart every piece of furniture that he had bought to make her comfortable and happy, and make an absolute shambles of the place. He wanted also to order that girl out into the street. At that moment he no longer cared what happened to her or where she went. His vanity had received its first rude shock. All the way home he shouted at the top of his voice and struggled to get away from the men who were looking after him. It took all Peter's strength to hold him tight. It was by no means a good sight to see this young man, who only half an hour before had been exhilarated by champagne and the feeling that he was really of some account as a man of the world, reduced to a condition of utter weariness by his violent outbursts. At first he absolutely refused to enter the house and insisted upon walking up and down the street. Finally, by making an appeal to his brother's affection, Peter persuaded him to go in quietly and up to his own room. There, pale and exhausted and entirely out of spirits, Graham turned quickly on his brother. "Keep Kenyon out," he said. "For God's sake, keep Kenyon out! I want _you_."

Kenyon heard these words and smiled to himself, nodded to Peter, and went downstairs again to make himself comfortable in the library and have a final cigarette before going to bed. He had every reason for self-congratulation. Graham was free,--there was no doubt about that,--and it looked as though Peter also would now be able to be made useful again. Luck certainly had been on his side that night.

It was not much after one o'clock when Peter shut the door of Graham's bed-room. From then onwards he turned himself into a sort of nurse, doing his best to concentrate all his thoughts on his brother's trouble and keep his own until such time as he could deal with it; and, while Graham poured out his heart--going over his story of the Ita Strabosck rescue again and again--Peter quietly undressed him, bit by bit. "Yes, old man," he kept saying, "I quite understand; but what you've got to do now is to get to bed and to sleep. Let me take off your coat. That's right. Now sit down for a second. Now let me undo your shoes. It's a jolly good thing I came home. You bet your life I'll stand by you and see you through--you bet your life I will!"

"And you swear you'll not say anything about this to mother or Belle, and especially father--even if I'm ill,--in fact to any one? You swear it?"

"Of course," said Peter.

There was something comical as well as pathetic in the sight of this big fellow playing the woman to this distraught boy,--undoing his tie, taking off his collar and gradually getting him ready for bed. It was a long and difficult process and needed consummate tact, tender firmness and quiet determination. A hundred times Graham would spring to his feet and--with one shoe on and one shoe off, minus coat and waistcoat, tie and collar--pace the room from end to end, gesticulating wildly, sending out a torrent of words in a hoarse whisper--sometimes almost on the verge of tears. He was only twenty-four--not much more than a boy. It was very hard luck that he should be up against so sordid a slice of life at a time when he stood at the beginning of everything.

But Peter knew intuitively that it was absolutely necessary for Graham to rid his system of this Strabosck poison and empty out his heart and soul before he could be put to sleep, like a tired child. And so, with the utmost patience, he subjected himself to play the part of a mental as well as a physical nurse. Better than that, he mothered his brother, smoothed him down, sympathized with him, assured him again and again that he had done the only possible thing; and finally as the first touch of dawn crept into the room had the infinite satisfaction of putting the clothes about his brother's shoulders and seeing his dark head buried in his pillow. Even then he was not wholly satisfied. Creeping upon tip-toe about the room he laid hands on Graham's razors and put them in his pocket. He was possessed with a sort of terror that the boy might wake up and, acting under a strong revulsion of feeling, cut his throat. It must be remembered that he had watched a human being under the strain and stress of a very strong and terrible emotion and he was naturally afraid. He knew his brother's excitable temperament. He had heard him confess that the girl had exercised over him something more than mere physical attraction, and although he was no psychologist it was easy for him to see that, for a time at any rate, Graham was just as ready to hurt himself as to hurt the girl. Some one had to be paid out for his suffering and it was Peter's business to see that his brother, at any rate, escaped punishment. Not content with having got Graham to bed and to sleep and secured the razors which might be used in a moment of impetuousness, Peter stayed on, sat down near the bed and listened to one after another of the sounds of the great city's awakening. It was then that he permitted himself to think back. He didn't remember the fracas in the studio apartment or the unpleasantness of the place with the unhealthy, unpleasant creatures who had been there. He repeated to himself over and over again the words--the cold, cruel words of Ranken Townsend,--"So this was your precious business engagement. Well, I don't give my daughter to a man who shares her with women like Papowsky, so you may consider yourself free." In his mind's eye he could see the tall artist march away. He felt again as though he had been kicked in the mouth.

II

Ranken Townsend had arranged a sitting with Madame Mascheri, the famous opera singer, at eleven o'clock. He entered his studio at ten, and the first thing he did was to ring up one of his best friends and get into a quarrel with him. He had already so surprised his old servant at breakfast that she had retired to the kitchen in tears. He was angry and sore and there was likely to be a nice clash in the studio when he said sharp things to the spoiled lady who considered that all men were in their proper places only when they were at her feet.

Ranken Townsend was more than angry. He was disappointed--mentally sick--completely out of gear. He had seen Peter Guthrie--and there was no argument about the fact--come out of a notorious house, dishevelled and apparently drunk. It was a sad blow to him. A bad shock. The effects of it had kept him awake nearly all night. Betty was the apple of his eye. He was going to protect her at all costs, and he knew that in doing so he must bring great unhappiness into her life. He had believed in Peter Guthrie. He had seemed to him to be a big, strong, clean, honest, simple, true fellow who had gone straight and who meant to continue to go straight. It meant a tremendous amount, an altogether incalculable amount to him as a father to have found that his estimate was wrong. He realized perfectly well that his words had been harsh the night before. He detested to have been obliged to say them; but, for the sake of his little girl, he was not going back on them. The evidence was too strong.

The telephone bell rang. He stalked across to it. "Well?" he said. "What's that? Who did you say? Send him up at once." And then, with his jaw set and his hands thrust deep into his pockets, he took up a stand in the middle of the studio and waited.

It was Peter. He came in quietly and looked very tired. "Good morning, Mr. Townsend," he said.

The answer was sharp and antagonistic. "I don't agree with you."

Peter put down his hat and stick, went up to the artist and stood in front of him squarely and without fear. "You're going to withdraw what you said last night."

"You think so?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because it was unjust and no man is hanged in these times before he's given a chance to defend himself."

"No one is going to hang you, Peter Guthrie. You've hanged yourself."

"No, no," said Peter, "that won't do. It isn't like you to adopt this attitude and I must ask you to treat me properly."

Townsend shot out a short laugh. "There's no need for you to ask me to do that. My treatment of you is going to be so proper that this is going to be the last time you'll come into this studio. I've done with you. So far as I'm concerned you're over. Betty isn't going to see you or hear from you again. I consider that it was a mighty good accident that took me into Fortieth Street last night. That's all I have to say."

Peter didn't budge. He just squared his shoulders and tilted his chin a little more. "I don't think that's all you've got to say," he said. "I quite understand that you had a bad shock when you saw me coming out of that place last night. If I were in your shoes I should say just what you're saying now."

"It's something to win your approval," said Townsend, sarcastically, "and I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you for coming down town to give me your praise."

"Oh, don't talk like that," said Peter. "It doesn't do any good and it doesn't help to clear things up."

"You can't clear things up. Neither of us can. You began by lying to me when you said you had a business engagement, and you wound up by coming out drunk of the rottenest house in this city. And, see here! I don't like your tone. I'm not standing here to be reproved by you for my attitude in this matter. I might be more inclined to give you a chance if you made a clean breast of it."

"I wish I could," said Peter, "but I can't. All I can tell you is that I had to go to that place last night for a very good reason. I'd never been there before and I shall never go there again. I hadn't even heard of the place until a few days ago. You've got to accept my word of honour that I went there with a friend of mine to get a man who means a very great deal to me out of bad trouble."

"It's taken you sometime to think that out," said Townsend, brutally.

Peter winced as if he had been struck. He had gone to the studio under the belief that everything would be quite easy. He was honest. His conscience was clear. He was not a liar. Surely his word would be accepted. Whatever happened he wasn't going to be disloyal to his brother. Apart from the fact that he had sworn not to give Graham away, he wasn't the kind that blabbed. He tried again, still keeping himself well under control, although he was unable to hide the fact that Ranken Townsend's utter disbelief in him hurt deeply.

"Mr. Townsend," he said, "I don't want to do anything to make you more angry than you are. It's perfectly simple for you to say that you won't have me marry Betty. But remember this: I've only got to go to Betty and ask her to marry me, with or without your consent, and she will. If you don't believe me, you don't know Betty."

"Ah! but that's exactly where you make your mistake," said Townsend. "I _do_ know Betty. And let me tell you this, Peter Guthrie: My girl has been brought up. She hasn't been dragged up or allowed to bring herself up. The consequence is that she's not among the army of present-day girls who look upon their fathers and mothers as any old trash to be swept aside and over-ridden whenever it suits them to do so. I'm the man to whom she owes all the happiness and comfort that she's known. I'm the man who's proud to be responsible for her, to whom she belongs and who knows a wide stretch more of life and its troubles than she does,--and, not being an empty-headed, individualistic, precocious little fool, she knows it too. She belongs to a past decade--to an old-fashioned family. Therefore, what I say goes; and if I tell her that, for a very good reason, I don't want her to have anything to do with you, she will be desperately unhappy, but she'll not question my authority or my right to say so. These are facts, however absurd and strange they may appear to you. I think it would be a damned good thing if other fathers took the trouble to get on the same footing with their daughters. There'd be less unhappiness and fewer grave mistakes if they did." He was almost on the verge of adding, "Look at your sister Belle if you don't believe me."

Peter had nothing to say.

The two men stood facing one another, gravely, in silence. They were both moved and stirred. And then Peter nodded. "I'm glad you're Betty's father," he said at last. "She owes you more than she can ever pay back. I give you my word that I shan't attempt to dispute your authority. I respect you, Mr. Townsend, and when I marry Betty I want to have your consent and approval. I also give you my word that it was absolutely necessary for me to go to Papowsky's last night, without any explanation whatever. Are you going to take it?"

"No," said Townsend; "I'm not. Even if I'd known you for years what you ask is too much for me to swallow. Good Lord, man! can't you see that I'm protecting my daughter--the one person I love in this world--the one person whose happiness means more to me than anything on earth? Why should I believe that you're different from other young men,--the average young man whom I see every day, who no more cares about going clean to the woman he is going to marry than he does for running straight afterwards? I don't know you and hitherto I've accepted you on your face value. When it comes to the question of a man's trusting his daughter to the first person who comes and asks him for her, he's got to be pretty sure of what he's doing. In any case, I don't hold with the old saying that 'young men will be young men.' You may sow your wild oats if you like, but they're not going to blossom in the garden of a little girl who belongs to me. In that respect I'm as narrow-minded as a Quaker. And let me tell you this finally: I know the sort of place that Papowsky's is. I know what goes on there and the sort of people who frequent it. To my mind any man who's seen coming out of it does for himself as the future husband of any good girl. If you have, as you say, a good reason for going there, tell it to me. If not, get out."

The artist had said these things with intense feeling. Hard as they were, Peter had to acknowledge that they were right. Just for one instant he wavered. He was on the point of giving the whole story away. Then his loyalty to his brother came back to him. He would rather be shot than go back on the man who had trusted him and with whom he had grown up with such deep affection. "Very well," he said, "that settles it. I've nothing more to say. But one of these days I'll prove that my word of honor was worth taking. In the meantime, you can't stop me from loving Betty and you'll never be able to stop Betty from loving me."

He turned on his heel, took up his hat and stick and went out.

III

Graham was sitting up in bed when Peter returned to his room. He was looking about him with an expression of queer surprise,--puzzled apparently to find himself in his room.

"Oh, hello, old man!" said Peter. "How d'you feel?"

Graham put his hand up to his head. "I don't know yet. Have I been asleep? I thought I'd been in a railway accident. I was looking about for the broken girders and the ghastly signs of a smash."

He got slowly out of bed, put on his slippers and walked up and down for a few minutes with a heavy frown on his face. The emotion of the night before had left its marks. He stopped in front of a chair on the back of which his evening clothes were hanging neatly. He remembered that he had thrown them off. He noticed--at first with irritation--that the things on his dressing-table had been re-arranged--tampered with. It didn't look as he liked it to look. Something had been taken away. It dawned on him that all his razors had been removed. "Removed,"--the word sent a sort of electric shock through his brain as it passed through. He went over to the window and looked out into the street. The sun glorified everything with its wonderful touch. Good God! To think that he might be standing at that very moment on the other side of the great veil.

"I don't know--I don't know what to say to you for all this, Peter," he said.

Peter sat down, thrust his hands into his pockets and his long legs out in front of him. Reaction had set in. He felt depressed and wretched. "One of these days," he said, "I may ask you to do the same thing for me."

Something in his tone made Graham turn round sharply. "What's wrong?"

"Everything's wrong," said Peter. "But I'll tell you some other time. Your affair has got to be settled first."

"No; tell me now," said Graham. He dreaded to feel that he was the cause somehow or other of bringing trouble upon his brother. Never before in all his life had he seen Peter looking like that.

"Mr. Townsend happened to be passing Papowsky's last night and saw me coming out. I'd had a scrap up in the studio with a bunch of men who were half drunk. I must have looked like it. He told me that he wouldn't have me marry Betty, and he repeated it this morning. I've just come away from his place. That's what's the matter with me."

"Oh, curse me!" cried Graham. "Curse me for a fool!"

Peter sprang to his feet. "Don't start worrying about me. And look here; don't let's waste time in trying to scrape up spilt milk. I'm going to marry Betty, that's a dead certainty, and sooner or later Mr. Townsend will withdraw the brutal things he said to me. And you're going to wipe your slate clean, right away. So buck up and get busy, old man. Have your bath and get dressed as soon as you can. I'm going to help you to fix your affair as soon as you're ready."

"How?" asked Graham.

"I don't know quite. I think I'll ask Kenyon."

"No, don't. Let's do it together. I don't want Kenyon to see,--I mean I'd rather Kenyon was out of it. I'd rather that you were the only one to look on at the remainder of my humiliation,--that's the word. He knows quite enough as it is."

"All right!" said Peter. "Hurry up, then. We'll go round to the apartment and see Ita Strabosck. I cashed a cheque on the way back from Mr. Townsend's. We can't let her go out into the street with nothing in her pocket,--that's impossible."

Graham nodded. He couldn't find words to say what he felt about it all. There was a look of acute pain on his pale face as he went into the bath-room.

And then Peter sat down at his brother's table and wrote a little note to Betty:

My own dearest Baby:

Something has happened and your father--who's a fine fellow and well worthy of you--believes that I'm such a rotter that he's told me to consider myself scratched. I'm going to play the game by him for your sake as well as his. Don't worry about it. Leave everything to me. I won't ask you to go on loving me and believing in me, because that you must do, just as I shall go on loving you and believing in you. _It has to be._ I've got to think things over to see what can be done.

In the meantime, and as long as I live, Your PETER.

He addressed the letter and put the envelope in his pocket. Then he went to the bath-room and called out: "Old man, shall I have some breakfast sent up for you?" The answer was, "No; the sight of food would make me sick."

Graham dressed quickly and nothing more was said by either of the brothers until they went out into the street together.

"We'll get a cab," said Peter.

"No; I'm too broke. Let's walk."

And so they walked hard, arm in arm. It seemed rather an insult to Graham that the day was so fine, the sky so blue and equable and that all the passers-by seemed to be going on their way untroubled. He'd have been better pleased if the day had been dark and ugly and if everybody had been hurrying through rain and sleet. His own mind was disturbed by a storm of the most unpleasant thoughts. The girl whom they were on their way to see had exercised a strong physical fascination over him. He had believed in her absolutely. She had meant a great deal to him. Her deceit and cunning selfishness brought pessimism into his soul. It was a bad feeling.

As they came up to the house with its shabby door, a man well-past middle age,--a flabby, vulgar person, with thick awkward legs,--left it rather quickly and walked in the opposite direction. The two boys went in and Peter led the way up the dark staircase. The door was open and Lily, the colored maid, was holding a shrill argument with a man with a basket full of empty siphons on his arm. Her face broke into an odd and knowing smile when she saw Graham. They passed her without a word and went along the passage into the sitting-room. It was empty, but in a hideous state of disorder. There was about it all that last night look which is so unpleasant and insalubrious. The windows had not been opened and the room reeked with stale tobacco smoke and beer. Cigar stumps lay like dead snails on the carpet. Empty bottles were everywhere and dirty glasses. Through the half-open door which led into the bed-room they heard a flutey, uncertain soprano voice singing a curious foreign song.

After a moment of weakness and indecision, Graham pulled himself together and called out: "Ita! Ita!" sharply.

The song ceased abruptly. There was a cry of well-simulated joy and the girl, with her hair frowzled and a thin dressing-gown over her night-dress, ran into the room with naked feet. She drew up short when she saw the expression on Graham's face and Peter's square shoulders behind him. "Somesing ees ze matter," she said. "Oh, tell me!" Second nature and constant practice made the girl begin to act. This was obviously an opportunity for being dramatic.

With a huge effort Graham controlled himself. "I'm giving up this apartment to-day," he said.

"You are giving up----?"

"I said so."

"And what ees to become of me? You take me somewhere else?"

"No. I hope I shall never see you again--never!"

The girl burst forth. How well he knew that piteous gesture--that pleading voice--the tears that came into those large almond eyes,--all those tricks which had made him what he had been called the night before at Papowsky's--"a boob". "What 'ave I done? Do you not love me any more? I love you. I will die for you. You are everysing to me. Do not leave me to ze mercy of ze world. Graham! Graham! My saviour! I love you zo!"

Graham shook her off. "Please don't," he said. "Just pack your things and dress yourself. All I've got to say to you is that I've found you out. Perhaps you'd better go back to Papowsky's. You're very clever,--they all say so there. Find another damned young fool--that'll be easy."

The girl suddenly threw back her head and broke into an amazing laugh. The sound of it,--so merry--so full of a sort of elfin amusement,--was as startling to the two boys as though a bomb had been dropped into the room. "I could not find such a damned fool as you," she said loudly and coarsely, "eef I 'unted the earth. Eef you 'ad waited to come until to-night you would 'ave found zis little nest empty and ze bird flown. There ees a better boob zan you. Perhaps you met 'im going out. 'E marries me to-morrow. I vas to keep zat for a leetle surprise. Oh, yes, I am clever, and eet kills me with laughing to zee you stand there like a school teacher. You turn over a new leaf now, eh? Zat ees good. Zo do I. To-morrow I am a wife. I marry a man. My time with babies ees over."

She picked up a glass that was half-full of beer and with a gesture of supreme contempt jerked it into Graham's face. Then, with the quickness of an eel, she returned to her bedroom and slammed the door. They heard her laughing uncontrollably.

Graham wiped his face with his handkerchief, and dropped it on the floor with a shiver. "I shan't want to borrow any money from you, Peter," he said in a low voice. "Let's go."

And they went out into the street together--into the sun, and took a long breath of relief--a long, clean breath, untainted by stale tobacco smoke and beer and the pungent scent of Ita Strabosck.

Peter made no attempt to put into words his intense sympathy, but he took his brother's arm and held it tight, and Graham was very grateful. Right out of the very bottom of his heart two tears welled up into his eyes as he walked away.

After all, he was only twenty-four.

IV

On her way up to her room that night, Ethel drew up short outside Graham's bedroom door. She knew that he was in, which was in itself unusual. She thought there must be something the matter, because she had seen Graham leave the house in the morning long after his usual time. She had also watched his face at dinner and had seen in it something that frightened her. It was true that Peter was her favorite brother, but she was very fond of and had great admiration for Graham. Also she, herself, was in trouble. Trouble seemed to be an epidemic in that family. Her Knight Errant next door, in spite of her signalling and the fact that she had laid out as usual the cigarettes and the candies, had deserted her. In order to receive his visits and feed herself on the excitement with which they provided her, she was still maintaining her pretence of invalidism, and the worst of it was she now knew that she had grown to be very fond of the boy, who at first had only been a source of amusement.

So, with a fellow-feeling for Graham, she listened outside his door. She wanted very badly to slip in and give her sympathy to her brother and receive some of it from him. She didn't feel quite as individualistic as usual. The artificiality of the flapper left her for the time being and she felt as young as she really was and rather helpless, and awfully lonely.

Hearing nothing, she tapped gently on the door, opened it and went in. Graham was sitting in an arm-chair with his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands. He made a picture of wretchedness which would have melted the heart of a sphinx. Ethel went over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. "Is anything the matter, Hammie?" she asked, using the nickname that she had given him as a child.

Graham didn't look up. "Oh, Lord, no!" he said, with a touch of impatience. "What should be the matter?" But he was very glad to feel that touch of friendliness on his shoulders.

"Can I do anything for you?"

"Oh, no. I'm all right--as right as rain."

Ethel knew better. She knew also that she would have said those very things to Belle if she had been caught in a similar state of depression. So she sat down on the arm of Graham's chair and put her hand against his cheek. "I've got about a hundred and seventy-five dollars, if that's any good to you," she said.

Graham gave a scoffing laugh, but all the same he was very grateful for the offer. "My dear kid," he said, "a hundred and seventy-five dollars--that's no better than a dry bone to a hungry man."

"Is it as bad as all that, Hammie?"

"Yes, and then some."

Ethel thought deeply for a few minutes. Her characteristic selfishness, which had been almost tenderly encouraged at school, had given way temporarily before her own disappointment. "Well," she said finally, "I've got four brooches and five rings, a watch and a dressing-case. You can sell them all if you like."

Then Graham turned round, gave his little sister one short, affectionate look and put his head down on her shoulder. "Don't say anything, please," he said. "Just let me stay here for a minute. It does me good."

And he stayed there for many minutes, and the two sat silently and quietly, getting from each other in their mutual trouble the necessary help which both needed so much. A strange, new feeling of motherliness stole over the girl. It surprised her. It was almost like being in church on Christmas Eve, or listening to the most beautiful melody.

It was a long time since these two had taken the trouble to meet each other half-way. The thoughts of both went back to those good hours when Graham had put his little sister on a sled in front of him and pushed her, laughing merrily, over the hard snow in the park. He had never even dreamed in those days of money and the fever that it brings, or women and the pain they make.

And then Graham got up, just a little ashamed of himself,--after all, he was now a man of the world,--and saw that Ethel's cheeks were wet with tears. It was his turn to try and help. "Good Lord!" he said. "You don't mean to say that you're worried about anything. What is it?"

She shook her head and turned her face away. "Oh, nothing--nothing at all."

All the same she felt much, ever so much better for the kiss that he gave her, and went along to her own room half-determined to be honest with herself and go back to school the next day. She was rather startled to find the smell of cigarette smoke in her bedroom, which was in darkness. She turned up the nearest light and almost gave a cry of joy when she found the boy from next door sitting on the window-sill.

"Jack!" she cried. "I thought you were--I thought you had----"

Jack threw his cigarette out of the window and got up awkwardly. "I got your note just now," he said, "and so I've come."

Ethel went to the door and locked it. All the clouds had rolled away. She was very happy. She had evidently made a mistake. He must have been prevented from coming. She wished he'd given her time to powder her nose and arrange the curls about her ears. As it was, she opened the box of cigarettes and held out the candies to him.

"No, thanks," said Jack. "I'm off chocolates and I've knocked off smoking to a great extent."

With a womanly touch which she and all women have inherited from Eve, who never forgot to stand with her back to the sun and took care, if possible, to remain in the woods until after breakfast, Ethel turned on a shaded light and switched off the strong overhead glare which made her look every day of her fifteen years. Then she sat down with the light over her left shoulder. She was quite herself again. All was well with the world.

"Where have you been?" she asked, a little imperiously.

"Nowhere," said Jack.

"Then why haven't you been to see me? I have signalled every night. I can't understand it."

"I know you can't. That's why I've stayed away."

Ethel was puzzled at the boy's solemn tone. "Of course, if you don't want to come, please don't. I wouldn't drag you here against your will for anything."

"Yes, but I _do_ want to come. I stay away for your sake, and I'm not coming again after this evening."

That was exactly what Ethel wanted to hear. She'd been afraid that Jack had found some one else. Now she knew differently. "Don't be silly," she said. "Have a cigarette. Come and sit on the sofa and don't let's waste time."

But Jack didn't move. He had gone back to the window-sill and remained hunched up on the narrow ledge, holding on with both hands. "I'm off in a minute," he said. "I'm just going to tell you one or two things before I go. Would you like to hear them?"

"If they're pleasant," she said.

"Well, they're not pleasant."

"Well, then, tell me."

For a moment or two Jack remained silent. Perhaps he was trying to find careful words into which to put his thoughts. When finally he spoke it was with a suppressed emotion that sent a quiver through the quiet room. "I can't stand coming here," he said. "I can't stand it. I don't know what you are--whether you're a mere baby who knows nothing, or an absolute little rotter. You tell me I can say what I think, so I'm going to." He got up and went a little nearer to the sofa. "What d'you think I'm made of? Look at yourself in the glass and then see whether you're the sort of a girl who can let a man into her bedroom night after night for nothing. I tell you I can't stand it. I stayed away, not because I wanted to, but because I didn't want to do you any harm. I was a fool for coming here at all. If I didn't believe that you are simply a silly girl I'd stay to-night and come every night as I used to do, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Next time you signal to a man take care to find out what he's made of and be a bit more careful. There, now you've got it. Good night and good-bye. I've a darned good mind to put the note you sent me to-night in an envelope and address it to your mother. It would save some other fellow from a good deal of unnecessary discomfort. I'm frightfully sorry to be so brutal, but I don't believe you know what you're doing. Perhaps this'll be a lesson to you."

He turned quickly, swung himself out, went up the rope ladder hand over hand and drew it up after him.

Ethel closed her eyes and sat rigid. The boy might have planted his fist in her face.

V

Kenyon had taken Mrs. Guthrie and Belle to the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre that night. A quiet little romantic play, quite unpretentiously written, had found its way to that theatre either by accident or as a stop-gap. The manager who put it there had arranged, even before the opening performance, to replace it at the end of the week with something which had a punch,--a coarse, vulgar, artificial piece of mechanism such as he had been in the habit of producing all of his managerial life. His intention to do this was strengthened by the press notices, which all agreed that the new piece was a very little play about nothing in particular and which made too great a demand upon the imagination of its audience. That last remark of the critics was worth a million dollars to the play's author. The theatre remained almost empty until the Friday night of its first--and if the manager had anything to do with it--only week. The scenery for the new production was already stacked on the stage. But to the amazement of all concerned, except the author, the theatre did business. The house was almost full and the box office was so busy that the young man who looked after it,--a past-master in rudeness,--became quite querulous. On Saturday night there was a full house and the booking was so big for the following week that the notices of withdrawal were taken down and the play with a punch had to find another home. The manager, greatly put out, watched this little play sail into a big, steady success, and whenever his numerous acquaintances--he had no friends--caught him in an unbusy moment, he would say: "I can't make it out. It beats me. Look at the notices. I couldn't understand a word of the thing when I read it. I only put it into the theatre to keep it warm. My word, I don't know what the public wants." He didn't, and he never would. But the author knew. He had made a play which appealed to the imagination of his audience.

Peter had watched the party go to the theatre after an early dinner; had seen Graham go up to his room and his father drive away to a meeting at the Academy of Medicine; and then, anxious to be alone and think things over, he too left the house for a long, hard tramp. He went into the park and walked round and round the reservoir. The night was fine and clear, and up in the sky, which was pitted with stars, a young moon lay on her back. From all sides the music of traffic came to his ears in a never-ceasing refrain, and high up he could see the numerous electric signs which came and went with steady precision and monotony. Every now and then he caught sight of the Plaza, whose windows all seemed to be alight. It gave a peculiar touch of fantasy to that side of the Park.

Peter found himself thinking of some of the things which Ranken Townsend had said to him. Without bitterness, and certainly without anger, he began to see something in the artist's bluntness which gradually made him long, with a sort of boyish anguish, to go in to his own father. The more he thought about this the more it seemed to him right and necessary and urgent to beard the Doctor in his den and break down the curious barrier which shyness had erected between him and his children. He realized at that moment that he stood desperately in need of a father's help and advice. It was quite obvious to him also that Graham needed these things even more than he did. If only they could both go to that wise and good man who stood aloof and get something more from him than the mere money with which he was so generous. He knew--no one better--that he always received from his mother the most tender sympathy, but how could he discuss with her some of the things with which he was faced since the Ita Strabosck episode had come into his life? Kenyon had done much to make it plain to him that it was not good to continue to walk in blank ignorance of the vital facts with which his father dealt daily. He was a man and he had to live in the world. His boyish days among boys were over. They belonged to the past.

It was borne in upon him as he went round and round the wide stretch of placid water in which was reflected the moon and stars, that his father should know all about Graham. Certain things that Kenyon had said stuck to his mind like burrs. If he could persuade Graham to make a clean breast of it to the Doctor, the brother who meant so much to him might be saved from a disaster which would not merely affect himself, but others,--a wife and children perhaps. Kenyon had hinted at this and the hint was growing in Peter's mind like an abscess. It was time that he and his brother faced facts and knew them. Who could initiate them better than the distinguished doctor whose life had been devoted to such serious questions?

Having brought himself up to this point and being also tremendously anxious to tell his father of the position in which he stood with Mr. Townsend, Peter determined to strike while the iron was hot--to go home and see his father at once. He left the park quickly, and when finally he let himself into the house was astonished to see how late it was. The servant told him that his mother and sister had come back from the theatre and had gone to bed. "Mr. Kenyon," he added, "came back, but went out again at once. Mr. Graham went to bed early and the Doctor has not returned yet."

"Good!" thought Peter. "Then I'll wait for him." He gave up his hat and stick, went through the quiet, dimly lit library, and after a moment's hesitation opened the door of the Blue Room,--that room in which he had been so seldom, hitherto only under protest. He had opened the door quietly and was astonished to see Graham sitting at his father's desk with the light from a reading lamp shining on his dark head. "By Jove, Graham!" he said. "You must have been thinking my thoughts. This is extraordinary."

Graham looked up with a start and thrust something under the blotting-pad. His face went as white as a sheet and he stammered a few incoherent words.

Quite unconscious of his brother's curious embarrassment, Peter sat on the corner of the desk. "I've had it out with myself to-night," he said, going, as he always did, straight to the point. "I've made up my mind to make father into a father from now onwards. I can't stand this detached business any longer. Let's both wait for him and have it out."

"What d'you mean?" asked Graham. "I don't get you." He put his hand out surreptitiously and scrunched up one of the sheets of note paper on which he had been writing.

"Listen!" said Peter, with intense earnestness. "I've got to know things. So have you. I've got to have advice. I've got to be treated as a human being. What's the good of our having a father at all if we don't get something from him? I don't mean money and a roof, clothes and things to eat. I mean help. I'm in a hole about Betty. I want to talk about my work--about my future. Graham, let's give father a chance. Many times he seems to me to have fumbled and been on the point of asking us to meet him half-way. Well, I'm going to do so. Stay here and let's both see it through. Have the pluck to tell him about your trouble and throw the whole responsibility on him. It's his and he ought to have it. Wait a second. Listen! If Ranken Townsend had been your father you never would have gone near Papowsky. You wouldn't have come within a thousand miles of Ita Strabosck--that's a certainty."

Graham got up quickly, but kept his hand heavily on the blotting-pad. "No," he said almost hysterically. "Count me out. I'm not in this. It's no good our trying to alter father at this time of day--it's too late. He's microbe mad. He knows nothing whatever about sons and daughters. I could no more tell him about the mess I'm in than fly over the moon. He'd turn and curse me--that's all he'd do. He'd get up and preach, or something. He doesn't understand anything about life. I'd a jolly sight rather go to mother, only I know it would hurt her so, and anyway my story isn't fit for her ears. No; cut me out, I tell you. I'm not in this."

Peter got up and put his hands strongly on his brother's shoulders. He didn't notice then how near he was to a breakdown. "Graham, old man, you've _got_ to be--you've just _got_ to be. What Kenyon said is true. You and I are blind and are damned children wandering about--stumbling about. We need--we absolutely need a father more than ever we did in our lives. So do Belle and Ethel. We all think that we can go alone, and we can't. I know I'm right--I just know it--so you've got to stay."

A puff of wind came through the open window. Several pieces of paper fluttered off the desk and fell softly on the floor. Peter stooped and picked them up. On them the words "Hunter G. Guthrie" had been written over and over again.

He laughed as he looked at them. "What on earth has father been writing his name all over these sheets for? How funny! What a strange old chap he seems to be. It's a sort of undergraduate trick, this,--practising a signature before writing a first cheque."

"Give 'em to me!" said Graham sharply, and he tried to snatch them away. His voice was hoarse and his hand shook.

Peter looked at him in great surprise. It was impossible for him not to be aware of the fact that something was dreadfully wrong. As he stood and looked into his brother's guilty face the fact which stood out most clearly was that Graham had himself been writing his father's signature all over those sheets of paper. Why? A man did a thing of that sort for one reason only.

He seized Graham's hand which was pressed on the blotting-pad, jerked it up, pushed the blotting-pad aside and picked up the cheque-book that laid beneath it.

"Don't touch that," cried Graham, "for God's sake! Let me have it! I'll tear out the cheque. I think I was mad. Oh, God! I'm so worried I didn't know what I was doing!"

There was a struggle, quick and sharp, and in an instant Graham found himself staggering across the room backwards.

With his heart standing still, Peter opened the thin, narrow, brown-covered book. A cheque for three thousand dollars had been made out to Graham Guthrie. The signature had been forged.

"You've done this," he said. "You've actually--"

Graham was up on his feet. His lips were trembling. He put out a shaking hand. "My God!" he whispered. "Father's in the library."

The sound of the Doctor's thin, clear voice came through the half-open door. Frozen with fear, Graham seemed to be unable to move. His very lips had lost their colour.

With an overwhelming anxiety to hide his brother's frightful fall from honesty and sanity, Peter pounced on the little book, thrust it into Graham's pocket, snatched up the give-away slips of paper, tore them into small pieces and threw them in the basket.

"Don't give me away. Don't let him know. If you do, I swear to God you'll never see me again!"

There was still something to be done, and Peter did it. He took his brother up in his arms, realizing that he was, in a way, paralyzed, carried him to a chair that was out of the ring of light and sat him down. "Get yourself in hand, quick," he whispered. "Quick, now!"

And Graham, strengthened by his brother's vitality, forced himself into some sort of control.

Striding to the fireplace, Peter stood there waiting for his father, with a strange pain going through his body. He felt just as though he had been told that Graham, his best pal and dear brother, had had an appalling accident and might not live.

The Doctor's voice, as he gave directions to a servant, came nearer and nearer.

VI

With his hand on the handle of the door, the Doctor paused. "I want you to call me to-morrow at half-past-seven, Alfred. Don't forget. I have a busy day. Good-night."

The two boys watched him come into the room. His head was high and there was a little smile round his usually straight mouth. He walked with a sort of sprightliness, as though moving to music. He looked extraordinarily young and exhilarated.

He saw what was to him a most unusual sight in that quiet, lonely work-room. He was surprised into an exclamation of great pleasure, and he quickened his pace until he stood between his sons. Graham got up and put on a nervous, polite smile. "This's what I most wanted," said the Doctor,--"my two boys waiting for me here in this room. I can't tell you--I can't tell you, Peter, and Graham, how often, how strongly, how eagerly I've wished to see you where you are now. I can't tell you how I've longed to have you here after my meetings, to tell you how I'm getting on, moving things forward, and to ask you share in my successes. My dear Peter--my dear Graham."

It was pitiful. The strange, almost incoherent outbreak of the shy man nearly made Peter burst into tears. He would almost rather his father had treated them coldly and with raised eyebrows. His present attitude--his unhidden joy--his eager, and even wistful welcome, had in it something of tragedy, because it showed all the waste of years during which the sympathy and the complete, necessary and beautiful understanding of these three might have been welded into one great, insurmountable rock.

The Doctor, with an obvious desire to play host,--an intuition which again touched Peter deeply,--went quickly to a little chest which stood in a corner of the room. "What will you have?" he asked anxiously. "I've got a very good cigar here, or cigarettes if you would like them better. Let me see! What do you smoke, Peter?"

"He doesn't even know what I smoke," thought Peter. "A pipe," he said.

"Oh, yes, yes! Well, this is generally said to be a very good mixture. Try some." He gave a jar of tobacco to Peter. "These are nice, though perhaps they are a little too dry." And he extended a box of cigars to Graham.

The boy helped himself, trying to keep his hand steady. "Thank you," he said.

"And now," said the Doctor, "let's sit down and have a long yarn. Shall we? I would like to tell you about to-night. The meeting was of vital interest and importance." He drew his chair forward so that it might be between those of the two boys. He looked from Peter's face to Graham's as though afraid that he was asking too great a favour. "You--you'll forgive my talking about myself, I'm sure--at least I hope you will. I so seldom have the opportunity,--with those I love, I mean--with those for whom I'm working. To see you here like this, at last, makes me very happy." He slipped his large glasses off and wiped them openly without attempting to hide the fact that they had become suddenly useless to him.

A short silence followed--a silence in which the emotion with which the room was charged could almost be heard. Peter threw a quick glance round it, almost as though he expected to see the curious experimental tubes turn and point accusingly at his brother. The laboratory was filled with such tubes and other curious instruments,--all of them silent witnesses of Graham's act of madness.

The Doctor re-lit his cigar, put his glasses on again and clasped his long, capable hands over one thin knee. "I wish I could even suggest to you," he said--more naturally and with keen enthusiasm--"the intense excitement that we bacteriologists are all beginning to feel. For years and years we've been experimenting, and little by little our work is coming to a definite head. Every time we meet we find that we've moved a step further on the road to discoveries. It makes me laugh to think that my early theories, which, only a few years ago, were scoffed at and looked upon as dreams, are taking shape. It's been a long, uphill fight. Science is beginning to win. It's all very wonderful." He noticed that Graham's cigar had gone out. With extreme politeness, such as a man would use to very welcome guests, he held out a box of matches.

The boy took it. "I don't feel like smoking," he said, with a catch in his voice.

Something in his tone made the Doctor peer closely at him. "You look pale, my dear lad," he said, "pale and tired. Aren't you well?"

"Oh, yes; he's perfectly all right," said Peter hurriedly, trying to steer his father to another subject.

Graham threw his cigar away. "I'm not!" he cried, with a sudden, uncontrollable outburst. "I feel as rotten as I am. I can't sit here and listen to you, father. Don't be kind to me, I can't stand it." He put his head down between his hands and burst out crying like a boy.

The Doctor was startled. He got up quickly and stood hesitatingly. He wanted to put his hands on the boy's shoulders, but the sudden breakdown brought back his shyness. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Peter, do you know?"

Peter nodded. He then made up his mind to let things take their course. "Let him tell you," he said. "This may be the turning point for all three of us."

Graham drew the cheque-book out of his pocket, opened it and threw it on the desk under the reading lamp. "Look!" he said. "That's what I've come to."

For some moments the Doctor saw nothing but a cheque drawn by himself in favor of his second son for three thousand dollars. The fact that he didn't remember having made it out, and the fact that it was for so large a sum made at first no impression upon him. He was so puzzled and so taken back at the sudden outburst of emotion which had broken up what he hoped was going to be a charming reunion that the sight of this cheque conveyed nothing to him. Both his sons watched him closely, not knowing what he would say or do. He was such a stranger to them--his feelings and characteristics were so unknown to them that they found themselves speculating as to the manner in which he would take this dreadful piece of dishonesty. A great surprise was in store for them.

When the Doctor realized what had been done,--that the signature on the cheque was not his own, although it was very cleverly copied,--they saw him wince and shut his eyes. After a moment of peculiar hesitation he drew his chair up to the desk and sat down. Holding his breath, Peter watched him tear the cheque out and quietly make out another for precisely the same amount. Then the Doctor got up and stood in front of Graham with the new cheque in his hand. All the sprightliness and exhilaration with which he had entered the room had left him. He looked old and thin and humble. His shoulders stooped a little and the cheque trembled in his hand.

"Am I such an ogre that my children are afraid to bring their troubles to me?" he said, in a broken voice. "What have I ever done to deserve this, Graham? You'd only to come to me and say that you needed money and I'd have given it to you. Who am I working for? For whom have I always worked?" He held out the cheque. "Take it, and if that isn't enough ask me for more. I'd like to know why it is that you need it, if you'll be good enough to tell me; but, for God's sake, don't hurt me like this again."

Without a word--without, indeed, being able to find a word,--infinitely more crushed by this kindness than he would have been by an outburst of anger and reproach,--Graham took the cheque, turned on his heel and left the room, walking like a drunken man.

Peter watched him go. There was a feeling of great relief in his heart. Nothing that he could have done or said--nothing that Kenyon could have said in his most forcible manner, with all the weight of sophistication behind it, could have pulled Graham up and set him on a new path so well as the unexpected generosity of his father and the few pathetic words with which he underlined it.

But when Peter turned round to his father with the intention of taking him, for the first time, into his confidence and treating him as he would have treated Ranken Townsend under the same circumstances, he saw that the Doctor was crumpled up in his chair with his hands over his face and his shoulders shaking with sobs, and so he held his peace; and instead of obtaining the help that he needed so much he put his strong arm round his father in a strange protective way, as though he were the stronger man.

"Oh, don't, father," he said. "Please don't."

VII

There was a good reason why Kenyon didn't stay out his fortnight at Dr. Guthrie's house. He had already begun to know several young men whose very good feathers were waiting to be plucked. It was obviously impossible for him to invite them to East Fifty-second Street, and it became necessary, therefore, that he should take a bachelor-apartment in which to set up business. There he could play cards until any hour that suited him and settle down seriously to make his winter in New York a success. Also, he confessed to himself, the atmosphere of the Doctor's house was not conducive to his peace of mind or to his rigidly selfish way of life. He hadn't come over to the United States in order to play the fairy godmother, or even the family adviser to the young Guthries. He had worked hard to clear the one thing out of Graham's life which had rendered him useless, and he had had the satisfaction of seeing Peter's engagement broken, for which admirable accident he was profoundly grateful, because Peter also would now be free. In fact, these two brothers could now easily be brought to concentrate upon Kenyon's deserving case and take round to his apartment any friends of theirs who enjoyed gambling and could pay when they lost.

Kenyon possessed a neat and tidy brain. It was run on the same principle as a well-organized business office. It had its metaphorical card indexes, letter-files and such like; so that when he made up his mind to go into his own quarters he gave the matter the closest and most careful consideration. He paid several visits to the well-known bachelor apartment-houses in and around West Forty-fourth Street. They would have been very suitable but for the existence of irksome rules and regulations as to ladies. He went further afield and, with Graham's assistance, examined several apartments in private houses. What he wanted was a place somewhere on the map where his breakfast would be cooked especially for him at any hour he desired, and which would be free of elevator boys, clerks, and the watchful eye of a manager. Finally he discovered exactly such a place on the second floor of a fairly large old-fashioned house in West Forty-eighth Street. In this the elderly lady who, as Kenyon at once saw, was blessed with the faculty of being able to look at things with a Nelsonian eye,--having, poor soul, to earn her living,--lived in the basement with her parrot and her Manx cat. Two young business men shared rooms on the first floor and a retired professor--who spent the greater part of his time in the country--rented the third floor. The servants slept in the attic.

Into this house Kenyon moved,--much against the wishes of all the Guthries, especially Belle,--the day after Peter's attempt to get in touch with his father came to such an utter failure. He was very well pleased with his quarters. They gave him elbow-room and freedom from the responsibility of looking after another man's sons. The sitting-room, arched in the middle, ran from the front to the back of the house and it was well and discreetly furnished. There was a particularly nice old Colonial mirror over the mantel-piece, and what prints there were hanging on the walls were very pleasant. The bedroom across the passage would have been equally large had it not been broken up to provide a bath-room and a slip-room for baggage.

Fate, however, with its characteristic impishness, interfered with Kenyon's well-laid scheme. At the very hour when he was arranging his personal photographs a cable addressed to him was delivered at Dr. Guthrie's house. It so happened that Peter was in the hall when the servant took it in, and he started off at once to take it round to his friend. He was glad enough to seize any excuse to see Kenyon again. He felt horribly at a loose end. Graham's affairs had completely upset him and disarranged his plans. He was longing to see Betty, but was not going back on his agreement with Ranken Townsend until such time as he could make the artist eat his words; and, as to his father and his endeavor to break down that apparently insurmountable barrier, he was utterly disheartened and depressed. He was shown into Kenyon's rooms at the moment when he was standing in front of a very charming photograph of Baby Lennox which he had placed on the sideboard. It showed her in a little simple frock, with a wide-brimmed garden hat, standing among her roses with a smile on her face. She looked very young, pretty and flower-like.

"Hello, Peter!"

"I've brought this cable round. Otherwise I wouldn't have rushed in on you quite so soon."

"My dear old boy," said Kenyon, "you know very well that you have the complete run of whatever place I may be living in, at all hours of the day and night. A cable for me, eh? What the devil--? I was jolly careful to give my address here to very few people in England. Too many are anxious to serve me with summonses. Baby Lennox is going to be married, perhaps, and sends me the glad tidings. By Jove, I wonder who she's nabbed!" He shot out a laugh and tore open the envelope. "Oh, my God!"

"What is it?" asked Peter, anxiously.

Kenyon held out the cablegram and remained standing rigid, with his mouth open and his eyes shut, and his face as white as a stone.

It was from Baby Lennox. "Your father died last night. A heart attack. Come home at once."

"Oh, my dear Nick!" said Peter. "My dear old boy! I can't tell you how----"

"No," said Kenyon; "don't say anything. Just sit down and wait for me. Whatever you do, don't go." And he went out of the room and across the passage to his bedroom, and shut himself in.

Peter waited. The few cold, definite and even brutal words contained in the cablegram would have hit him much harder and rendered his sympathy for his friend very much more real if he could have felt what it would have been to him to hear of the death of his own father. While he waited, mechanically holding that slip of paper between his fingers, his respect for his friend's grief widened into an odd and powerful feeling of envy. The man who was dead had been infinitely more than a father. He had been a friend and a brother as well. It made him sick and cold to feel that the receipt of such a cablegram bringing to him the news of the death of his own father would have moved him only to extreme sympathy for his mother. He was ashamed and humiliated to realize that no actual grief would touch him, because his father was nothing more than a sort of kind but illusive guardian or a good-natured step-father--altogether unused to children--who effaced himself as much as he could and threw all responsibility upon his wife.

It was an hour before Kenyon reappeared, and during that time--which seemed to Peter no more than a few minutes--he went over again in his mind the scene which had taken place in the Doctor's laboratory, out of which he had gone stultified and thrown back upon himself. He was as grateful as Graham had been for the Doctor's generosity, but appalled at the thought that he had utterly failed to realize not only the gravity of Graham's act, but the long years of parental neglect which made such an act possible. It seemed to him that the way in which his father had taken that deplorable incident was all wrong. He should not have written another cheque. He should have had Graham up in front of him, strongly and firmly, and tried him as a judge would have tried him if his act had been discovered and dealt with by law. He should have gone into all the circumstances which led up to the forgery and thereby have cleared the way for a new understanding. As it was, his acceptance of it was so weak that it gave Peter and Graham a feeling almost of contempt for that too kind man to whom children were obviously without significance, and the unmistakable knowledge that he was unable to understand his grave responsibility and the fact that he, alone among men, must take the blame for all their misdeeds and mistakes, because they had been allowed to enter life unwarned, unguided and unhelped. The outcome to Peter of this hour's bitter thought was finally this: That if news were brought to him at that moment of his father's death the only sorrow that he could feel would be at the fact that he felt no sorrow.

When Kenyon came back into the room it was with his usual imperturbability. He might merely have left it to answer the telephone or interview the man who had come to collect his clothes to be ironed. But his eyes were red. In his own peculiar way he had loved his father and admired him. It was the first time that he had wept since he had been a child.

"Thanks, so much, for waiting, old boy," he said. "I hope you've been smoking, or something."

"No," said Peter; "I have things to think about too."

Kenyon looked about, with a queer little smile. "I was just settling down," he said. "Very decent room, this, isn't it? Well, well, there it is. You never know your luck, eh?"

"When will you sail, Nick?"

"The first possible boat. Do you know anything about the sailings? Ah, this paper will have it. I detest the sea and its everlasting monotony and blandness, and the dull-bright propinquity that it forces upon one." He opened the paper and searched among its endless columns for the Shipping News. "Here we are. 'Trans-Atlantic Sailings.' I have a wide choice, I see. There's a White Star and a Cunarder leaving to-morrow at twelve-thirty. The _Olympic_, I see! That's good enough,--if she's not full up. I'll see to it this afternoon. There's sure to be a cabin somewhere at this time of year."

"I shall miss you badly," said Peter.

"Thanks, old man. I know you will. And I shall hate going. Well, well!"

Peter picked up a book and put it down again; opened and shut a box of cigarettes and pushed a bowl of flowers nearer the middle of the table. "Do you want any--I mean, can I----?"

Kenyon laid his hand on his friend's square shoulder. "Not this time, Peter, old son. Thanks, awfully. I've had one or two good nights and my pockets are full of dollars. They'll see me home with perfect comfort. Well, here ends my visit to the United States. To-morrow night I shall have left the hospitable Statue of Liberty behind me. But she'll see me again. I'll dash round in the morning and thank your people for their extreme kindness to me. You'll see me off, won't you?"

"Yes," said Peter; "of course."

"Of course. We won't dine to-night. I--I don't feel like it."

"I understand, old man," said Peter.

"So long, then."

"So long," said Peter.

"The Earl is dead!" said Kenyon, with a sudden break in his voice. "Long live the Earl!" And he raised his hand above his head.

VIII

Not for the first time in his comparatively short life, Nicholas Kenyon was able to put to the test his often boasted power of self-control. It was his creed to accept everything that might happen to him, whether good or bad, with equanimity. It was part of his training to allow nothing to interfere with the routine of his day and the particular scheme that he had worked out for himself. He was, however, utterly unprepared for his father's death. Only the day before he had received a very cheerful and amusing letter from the Earl of Shropshire which had provided him with many quiet chuckles. When the blow came in that sudden fashion it knocked him down and for an hour reduced him to the level of an ordinary human being--of a man who had not specialized in individualism and who did not set the earth revolving round himself as its hub. Shut up in his bedroom he gave way to his real and best emotions, the genuineness of which surprised him. He was a master egotist--a superindividualist--the very acme of selfishness. Therefore, odd as it may seem, he was somewhat ashamed of his deep feeling, because it proved to him that one of the links of his carefully forged chain of philosophy was weak. He defined the word philosopher as one who is profoundly versed in the science of looking after himself.

As soon as Peter had left Kenyon's rooms, the new Earl of Shropshire took himself in hand and "carried on" as they do in the Navy after casualties, accidents and the issue of new orders. He continued to arrange his photographs round the room. He considered that he might as well make himself completely comfortable until the time came for him to pack up again and leave the country. He called up Belle on the telephone and had a little talk with her. He told her of his father's death and of the fact that he would have to sail within the next twenty-four hours. He listened with satisfaction to her cry of anguish, and arranged with her to come to see him that evening. It appeared that she was engaged to dine with some friends and go with them to hear Alfred Noyes read his poems at the Æolian Hall. He insisted upon her keeping her engagement and begged that she would come round to his rooms alone at eleven o'clock.

He didn't intend to leave the United States, even under such circumstances, without adding Belle to his little list of conquests. The cold-bloodedness of such an intention was peculiarly characteristic of the man. "No weakness," he said to himself--"no weakness. No matter what happens, what had happened, is happening or may happen, you must carry on. You've built up a creed, stick to it." And then, very quietly--having changed his tie to a black one--he went forth to discover the offices of the White Star Steamship Company,--having obtained the proper directions from his landlady. He took the subway to the Battery, interviewed a clerk of Number One Broadway, had the good fortune to find that there was a state-room vacant on the boat deck of the _Olympic_; wrote his cheque for it; pocketed a bundle of labels; paid Graham a brief visit in his office on Wall Street and walked all the way home again, endeavoring to count the German names all along the most amazing street in the world, and giving up his temporary hobby in despair. On the way home he sent off a cable to Baby Lennox, giving her the name of the ship on which he was to sail. By this time he was tired and a little dazed at the amazing stir and bustle of Broadway, with its never-ceasing lines of cable-cars and its whir and rush of human traffic. He was glad of a cup of tea, and presently arranged himself for a quiet nap on the sofa in his sitting-room.

Later, with his mind concentrated solely on Belle's impending visit and what he intended to achieve, he dined alone at the Ritz, dropped in to see a turn or two at the Palace, and strolled back to Forty-eighth Street at half-past-ten. As he went into the house he heard the landlady talking to the two young business men who lived on the first floor. She was asking them to be good enough not to play the piano that evening, as the Professor had come back from the country and was very unwell. She had sent for the doctor, and he would be more comfortable if the house were as silent as it could be made.

Knowing that Belle would be punctual that night, of all nights, he went down just before eleven o'clock and waited for her at the front door. It was his intention to get her into the house unobserved, more for his own sake than for hers. The night was clear, but half a gale was blowing, carrying before it all the dust of the city and sending odd pieces of paper swirling into the air and making the hanging signs outside shops and small restaurants creak and groan. In its strong, vibrating song there was a note of wild passion that fitted exquisitely into Kenyon's frame of mind.

Belle drove up in a taxicab a few minutes after eleven. "Not a word until we get upstairs," said Kenyon, as he helped her out. And then when she stood in his sitting-room, with all her emotions in a state of upheaval, nothing was said for many minutes. He took her in his arms and kissed her, delighting in her young beauty and freshness with all the appreciation of a connoisseur.

There seemed to Belle to be no indiscretion in this visit. Was she not engaged to be married to this man?

As a matter of fact, she was not. Kenyon had been playing with her; and now that he had succeeded to his father's title he had even less intention of dealing seriously by her than ever before. Marriage was not in his thoughts or plans. The title was his and the old house that went with it, but he was no better off than he had been as Nicholas Kenyon, the Oxford undergraduate. On the contrary he now had responsibilities of which he had hitherto been free and he must look out for some one who could buy his name for a substantial sum. If Belle had read into his vague and indefinite remarks a proposal of marriage it only showed that she possessed a very lively imagination. He was not going at that point to undeceive her. He was merely going to take from her everything that she was gracious enough to give. His trip to New York had provided him with very little in actual substance. He was determined that it should not be altogether empty, and that Belle should furnish him with a charming memento.

He broke into Belle's preliminary remarks of conventional condolence by saying, "Thank you; but please don't say a word about my father. Let's talk about ourselves. We're alive. The next few hours are our property. Let's make them memorable. Let's give each other something that we can never forget." And he took her cloak and led her to a chair as though she were a queen, and stood looking at her with very greedy eyes.

But Belle's temperament was Latin. Ever since Kenyon had spoken to her over the telephone she had been unable to control her feelings. She loved this man overwhelmingly. She had given him all her heart, which had never been touched before. To her it seemed amazingly cruel that fate had come along with its usual lack of sympathy and circumspection and put a sudden end to all the delightful hours to which she had been looking forward. The death of a man whom she didn't know meant very little to her. She was young, and to the young what is death but a vague mystery, an inconvenient accident which seems to affect every one but themselves? Indeed, she rather resented the fact that Kenyon's father, in dying, was to take so suddenly out of her life the one human being about whom her entire happiness revolved.

"Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas! Must you go? Must you leave me? Let me go with you. I have the right. I shall be miserable and unhappy without you." And she clung to him with all the unreasonableness of a child.

Kenyon was not in the least touched by this appeal--only extremely pleased, because it showed him that Belle was in the right mood to be won. He put his hand on her round, white shoulder. "You must be brave," he said. "I know how you feel, but you must help me. Don't make things more difficult than they are. I may be able to come back quite soon,--who can tell?"

"I believe you're glad to go!" cried Belle.

Kenyon drew back. He wanted to make her feel that she had hurt him. He succeeded.

In an instant, full of self-reproach, Belle was on her feet and in his arms again. "What am I going to do without you? I almost wish you'd never come into my life. I've been looking forward to your being here the whole winter. How am I going to get through the days alone?"

A motor-car drew up at the house. Neither of them heard Dr. Guthrie's voice giving a quick order to the chauffeur or recognized his step as he passed upstairs on the way to see his friend, the Professor, on the floor above, to whom he had been called by the landlady.

Presently, having turned out all the lights except a shaded lamp on the table, Kenyon began to let himself go. He threw aside his characteristic calmness and became the lover--the passionate, adoring man who was about to be separated, under tragic circumstances, from the girl who was equally in love. He threw aside his first intention of finessing Belle into his bedroom on the plea of asking her to help him to pack. He remembered that the old man above was ill and that the landlady and others would be passing to and fro. This was distinctly annoying. He was, however, a past-master in the art that he was at present pursuing and set the whole of his mind on his opportunity. Belle was, naturally enough, as putty in his hands and her despair at losing him made her weak and pliable.

He sat down on the sofa and held Belle in his arms and kissed her again and again. "I love you! I love you! I don't know--I can't think what I shall be like without you," he said, bringing all his elaborate cunning to play upon her feelings. "More like a man who's lost his arms than anything; and we were to have come nearer and nearer this winter, finding out all the best of each other and all the joy that it is to love wholly and completely."

"Oh, don't go, don't go!" cried Belle, making a pathetic and almost child-like refrain of the words, "I love you so! I love you so!"

Kenyon bent down with her until her head was pillowed on the cushions, and kissed her lips and eyes. "You must love me, sweetheart, you must. It's the only thing that I can turn to and count on now. Go on loving me every minute that I'm away. I shall need it,--and before I go let me have the precious proof of your love to store up in my heart. Give me the priceless gift that is the only thing to keep me living till I come back."

"Nicholas, Nicholas!" she whispered, with her young breasts heaving against him. "I love you so! I love you so!"

The moment of his triumph had almost been reached when the Doctor, on his way down, saw something glistening in the passage outside Kenyon's sitting-room. He stooped and picked it up. He was puzzled to see that it was a little brooch that he had given to Belle on one of her birthdays. Her initials had been worked on it in diamonds. For several moments he held it in his hand, wondering how it could have been dropped in that place. He was utterly unaware of the fact that Kenyon lived in the house which he knew to be given up to bachelors. Then the blood rushed into his head. Almost for the first time in his life the Doctor acted on the spur of the moment. He was filled with a sudden sense of fear before which his inherent shyness and hesitancy were swept completely away. He tried to open the door. It was locked. He hammered upon it, shouting: "Let me in! Let me in!"

Kenyon, cursing inwardly, sprang up from the sofa. "It's your father," he said. "Go and sit by the table, quick, and pretend to be arranging these photographs." He could have ignored that knocking, but the result would be that the Doctor would go down to the landlady and there would be a scandal. How in the name of thunder did he know that Belle was in the room? He dashed over to the mantel-piece, collected a handful of his pictures and threw them on the table in front of Belle, who, with a touch of panic, tried to smooth her hair. Then he went to the door and opened it.

"Good evening, Doctor," he said quietly. "This is very kind of you. Belle is here helping me to pack, and Peter should have been here, but I expect something has detained him. Do come in." He saw the brooch in the Doctor's hand and cursed Belle's carelessness.

As Dr. Guthrie entered the room the blood slowly left his head. A feeling of intense relief pervaded him. He saw Belle sitting at the table with the utmost composure putting one photograph on top of another. At his side stood the man who had recently been his honored guest and who was the best friend of his eldest son,--the man of whose sad loss he had heard that afternoon from his wife. He thanked God that everything was well and hastened to accept Kenyon's suggestion that he had come there for the purpose of saying good-bye to him. It saved him from the appearance of having lost his head and made a fool of himself. "I--I'm indeed grieved to hear of your father's death, my dear Mr. Kenyon," he said, stammering a little. "I was called to see an old friend of mine who lives in this house, who isn't at all well, and I thought I'd take the opportunity on my way down----"

"I'm deeply obliged to you," said Kenyon, giving the weak, nervous man before him the credit of having seized the hint so quickly. "It helps me very much to have so many good friends. I sail to-morrow at two-thirty. This is a good opportunity for me to thank you very much for your delightful hospitality. Will you wait for Peter?"

"No; I think not, thanks," said the Doctor. "It's getting late and, as you say, Peter has in all probability been detained. Belle, dear, I think you'd better come with me, now."

Kenyon was still quite placid and courteous and undaunted. "Oh, but mayn't she stay until Peter turns up?"

"I think not," replied the Doctor, astonished at his own firmness. "It's very late."

"Curse it! Curse it!" cried Kenyon, inwardly. But with a little smile he went over to Belle and gave her his hand. "You've helped me a lot," he said. "I can easily finish packing now. Good night and good-bye."

Choking back her sobs and full of resentment at her father's clumsiness and interference, Belle rose and allowed Kenyon to help her into her cloak.

By a strange accident she, like Graham, had been saved from a disaster which might have followed her into the future. God's hand must have been stretched out to help that man, who, by his unconscious neglect, had made it possible for these two children of his to stand on the brink of irreparable misfortune.

Kenyon, keeping up a quiet flow of conventional remarks, followed them down-stairs and out into the street. He could have drawn Belle back into the hall while the Doctor went out to the car, and kissed her once again. But,--it was over, what was the use. He watched her fling herself into the motor-car and sit all hunched up with her hands over her face, and then he took the Doctor's hand and shook it warmly. All the angels in Heaven must have shuddered as he did so, and cried, "Judas! Judas!"

"Good-bye again, then," said the Doctor. "I'm deeply sorry for the reason that takes you away from us. I hope we may see you again soon."

"I hope so, too," said Kenyon.

Standing in that quiet street he watched the automobile drive away, and cursed. His mind was filled with impotent rage. He felt as he did when he was a child and some one had hurt him. He wanted to find the thing which that some one treasured most and break it all to pieces, and stamp on it. Then he returned to his rooms, switched on all the lights, and with a gesture almost animalish in its baffled passion, swept all the photographs from the table.

He was kicking them savagely, one after another, when he heard the whistle which he and Peter had used at Oxford to attract each other's attention. He ran to the window and opened it. There stood Peter with a glint of moonlight on his great square shoulders.

"Come up!" said Kenyon. "By God, my luck's come back! Now I can make that old fool pay for ruining my evening!"

IX

With a fiendish scheme in the back of his head and with a most unpleasant smile on his face, Kenyon went over to the sideboard. He brought out two glasses. In one he mixed a whiskey high-ball and in the other he poured a concoction of neat whiskey and brandy, adding everything else that his bottles contained,--a mixture calculated to dull the senses even of the most hardened drinker. Then he waited--still with this unpleasant smile upon his face.

When Peter came in he looked tired and pale. His boots were covered with dust and there were beads of perspiration on his forehead. "I saw that you were up," he said, "so I whistled. If you hadn't called out I should have gone home. Hope you don't mind."

"Mind!" cried Kenyon. "I never was so glad to see anybody in my life. You look like a tramp. Where've you been?"

Peter threw his hat on the sofa and sat down heavily. "I wasn't in the mood to go home to dinner. I've been walking hard ever since I saw you. God knows where I've been. At one time I stood under the apartment-house in Gramercy Park. It's a wonder I didn't go up and have it out again with Ranken Townsend. But it wouldn't have been any use."

"Not the smallest," said Kenyon. "You'd only have given him the satisfaction of standing on his hind-legs and preaching to you. Will you have something to eat?"

Peter shook his head.

"Well, then, have a drink." And he put the poison in front of Peter. "I was going to drink to myself,--a rather dull proceeding alone. Now you can join me. On your feet, Peter, old man, and with no heel-taps, I give you 'the new Peer! The most decorative member of England's aristocracy,--Nicholas Augustus Fitzhugh Kenyon, Eighth Earl of Shropshire, master of Thrapstone-Wynyates--the man without a shilling!' Let it go!"

Peter stood up, clinked his friend's glass with his own, emptied it and set it down. "Good Lord!" he said, with a frightful grimace. "What in thunder was that?"

Kenyon burst into a derisive laugh. "'Some drink,' as you say over here. Away goes your water-wagon, Master Peter. Off you come from your self made pedestal. Drunk and incapable will be the words that will presently be very fitly applied to you, my immaculate friend." And he laughed again, as though it were a great joke. It would do him good to see Peter "human," as he called it, for once, to satisfy his sense of revenge--to pay out Dr. Guthrie for his cursed interference.

Peter was glad to get back to his chair. "I don't care what happens to me," he said. "What does it matter? I've got nothing to live for--a father who doesn't care a damn what becomes of me, and a girl who's given me up without a struggle."

He had had nothing to eat since the middle of the day. He was mentally and physically weary. Although he was unaware of the fact, he had caught a severe chill. It was not surprising that the horrible concoction which Kenyon had deliberately mixed went straight to his head.

Everything vile lying at the bottom of Kenyon's nature had been stirred up. At that moment he cared nothing for his friend's repeated generosity, his consistent loyalty and his golden friendship. With a sort of diabolical desire to amuse himself and see humiliated in front of him the man who had stuck to his principles so grimly, he filled his glass again, to make certainty doubly certain. "This time," he cried, "I'll give you another toast. Come on, now. On your feet again, and drink to 'that most charming family, the Guthries, and in particular to the eldest son--to the dear, good boy who has run straight and never been drunk, and has treated women with such noble chivalry. In a word, to Peter, the virgin man.'" He raised his glass, and so did Peter. This time the stuff almost choked him and he set his glass down only half empty. But he put on a brave front and sat up straight, laughing a little. "Nice rooms, these," he said. "Large and airy. Bit nicer than our first rooms at Oxford, eh?" How different this hideous poison made him look. Already he was like a fine building blurred by mist.

"It's extraordinary what you dry heroes can do when you try," said Kenyon. "All I hope is that you'll come face to face with your fond parent presently when you fumble your way into your beautiful home." He bent down and picked up his photographs and went on talking as though to himself. "Yes, there's some satisfaction in making others pay. I've tried it before, and know. I remember that plebeian little hunx at Oxford who was going into the Church. His name was Jones,--or something of the sort. I think he was a damned Welshman. He once called me a 'card sharp.' I didn't forget it. The first night he turned up in his Parson's clothes I doped him and he woke up next morning in the gutter. I loved it. Now, then, Peter, give me a hand with these things and bring them across the passage to my bedroom." He pointed to some books and left the room with his photographs.

Peter got up unsteadily and rocked to and fro. He picked up the books as he was directed and staggered after his friend. He lurched into the bedroom and stood in the doorway, supporting himself. "I'm--I'm drunk," he said, thickly. "Hopelessly drunk. Wha--what the devil have you done to me?"

Kenyon burst out laughing. Many times he had threatened to do this for his friend, whose attitude of consistent healthiness and simplicity had always irritated him. He delighted at that moment in seeing Peter all befogged and helpless and as wholly unable to look after himself as though he were a baby.

"Now you'd better go," he said sharply. He was tired with the episode. "I'm sick of the Guthries! Go home and cling to your bed while it chases round the room. I'll have mercy on you however to this extent. I'll put you in a taxi. There's sure to be one outside the hotel down the street. Come on, you hulking ex-Oxford man. Lean on me. Rather a paradox, isn't it? Hitherto I've always leaned on you." He got his visitor's hat and jammed it on his head, all cock-eyed. And then, still talking and jibeing and sneering, he led the uncertain Peter down-stairs.

There were two taxicabs drawn up outside the hotel to which Kenyon had referred. He shouted and waved his hand. A chauffeur mounted his box, manoeuvred the car around and drove up, glad to get a fare.

As he did so, a night butterfly flitted past, on her way home. She had had apparently an unsuccessful evening, for she stopped at the sight of these two men. Her rather pretty, thin, painted face wore an eager, anxious look. "Hello, dearie!" she said, and touched Kenyon on the arm.

"By Jove!" said Kenyon to himself. "By Jove!"

He was struck with a new inspiration. He had made his friend drunk. Good! Now he would send him off with a woman of the streets. That would complete his evening's work in the most artistic fashion, and render Peter human at last. And who could tell? It might hit the Doctor fair and square,--"the tactless, witless, provincial fool."

"Wait a second," he said to the girl, and with the able assistance of the driver put the almost inanimate and poisoned Peter into the cab. Then he turned. The night bird was eyeing him with a curious wistfulness. She was too smartly dressed and the white tops of her high boots gleamed sarcastically. "Well, dearie?"

"There's a customer for you," said Kenyon, jerking his finger towards the cab. "Take him home. He has money in his pocket. Help yourself."

The girl gave the driver her address--which was somewhere in the Sixties--and then, with a little chuckle, jumped in and drew the door to behind her with a bang that echoed through the sleeping street.

The cab drove away, and Kenyon's laugh went after it.

He was revenged.

X

But for the chauffeur, a burly and obliging Irishman, Nellie Pope's unwilling and unconscious customer would never have reached her rooms. They were on the top floor of a brown-stone house which had no elevator. The struggle to earn his own daily bread made the chauffeur sympathetic. So he got Peter over his shoulder, as though he were a huge sack, and carried him step by step up the narrow, ill-lit, echoing staircase. On the top landing he waited, breathing hard, while the girl opened the door with her latch-key.

"Where'll I put him?"

"Bring 'im into the bedroom," said the girl. "I'm sure I'm obliged to you for the trouble you've taken, mister. You'll 'ave a glass of beer before you go down, won't you?"

"Sure!"

He lumped Peter on to the bed with an exclamation of relief. It groaned beneath his dead weight. Mopping his brow and running his fingers through a shock of thick, dry hair, the Irishman looked down at the great body of his own customer's evening catch. "I guess I've seen a good many drunks before," he said, "but this feller's fairly paralyzed. It's a barrel he must have had, or perhaps he's shot himself with one of them needle things. Anyway, he's a fine-looking chap."

Nellie Pope, who had heard these remarks as she was pouring out a bottle of beer,--it was one of those apartments in which every sound carries from room to room and in which when you are seated in the kitchen it is possible to hear a person cleaning his teeth in the bathroom,--went in and stood at the elbow of the chauffeur. Switching on a light over the bed she peered into Peter's face. Her own lost most of its prettiness under the glare. There were hollows and sharpnesses here and there, the roots of the hair round her temples were darker than the too-bright gold of the rest of it. There was, however, something kind, and even a little sweet about her English cockney face and shrewd eyes. "Yes 'e's a fine looking chap, isn't 'e,--a bit of a giant, too, and looks like a gentleman. Poor boy, I wonder what that feller did to 'im!" She put her hand on Peter's head and drew it back quickly. "'E's got a fever, I should think. It looks as if I should 'ave to play nurse to-night. Oh, I beg pardon, mister, 'ere's your beer."

The Irishman took the glass, held it up against the light, made a curious Kaffir-like click with his tongue and threw back his head. "I guess that went down fine," said he. "One dollar and ten cents from you, Miss, and I'll make no charge for extras." He held out a great horny hand.

Nellie Pope opened her imitation gold bag. "Bin out o' luck lately," she said. "Don't know whether I've got--No, I 'aven't. Oh, I know!" With a little laugh she bent over Peter again and hunted him over for some money. Finding a small leather case she opened it. It contained a wad of bills. With a rather comical air of haughty unconcern she handed the chauffeur two dollars. "Keep the change," she said.

He laughed, pocketed the money, handed back the glass and went off, shutting the door behind him.

Miss Pope, who had a tidy mind as well as an economical nature, took the glass into the kitchen and finished the bottle herself. And then, without removing her hat and gloves she sat down and counted the money that was contained in the case. "One hundred and twenty-five dollars," she said. "Some little hevening!"

She put the case into her bag, where it lay among a handkerchief, steeped in a too-pungent scent, a small, round box of powder, a stick of lip salve, and a few promiscuous dimes. Then she took off her hat--a curious net-like thing round which was wound two bright feathers--her coat and her gloves. The latter she blew out tenderly, almost with deference. They were white kid. All these she put very carefully on a scrupulously clean dresser. Singing a little song she arranged a meal for herself on the table,--having first laid a cloth. Bread, butter and sardines made their appearance, with the remains of a chocolate cake which had been greatly to the taste of her last night's customer, who had not been, however, a very generous person. Extremely hungry, she sat down and, with the knowledge that her purse was full, laid on the butter with a more careless hand than usual. While she ate she enjoyed the bright dialogue of Robert Chambers in a magazine which, having first broken its back in order to keep it open, she propped up against a bowl. Half way through the meal, she jumped up suddenly. "'Ere!" she said. "You can't leave that poor boy like that, you careless cat, and 'im lying with a fever!" She went swiftly into the bedroom, and once more stood looking down at the inert form of poor old Peter. Then she laughed at the difficulty of taking off his clothes, and with a shrug of her shoulders started pluckily at his boots. She hung the coat and waistcoat over the back of one of the chairs,--there were only two,--and having folded the trousers with great care, returned to her supper. It was after two o'clock when finally she crept quietly into bed.

XI

A little over twenty-four years before, Nellie Pope had been born to two honest, hard-working country folk. They lived in a village of about two dozen cottages a stone's throw from the great cross cut by the Romans on the chalky side of Chiltern Hills, in England. Her parents' quiver had already been a full one and there was indeed very little room in it for the new arrival. Eight other boys and girls had preceded her with a rapidity which must have surprised nature herself, bounteous as she is. The father, a deep-chested, brown-bearded, very ignorant, but good-natured man, worked all the year round on a farm. His wages were fourteen shillings a week. The wife, who had been a domestic servant, added to the family pot by taking in washing and, if able, helping at the big house when guests were there. Neither of them had ever been farther away from their native village than the town which lay in the saucer of the valley, the steeple of whose church could be seen glinting in the sun away below.

Little Nellai, as she was called, was thrown on her own resources from the moment that she could crawl out of the narrow kitchen door into the patch of garden where potatoes grew and eager chickens played the scavenger for odd morsels of food. Her eldest sister was her real mother, and it was she who daily led her little brood of dirty-faced children out into the beech forest which stood in strange silence behind the cottage. The monotonous years slipped by one after another, enlivened only by a death or a birth or a fight, or a very occasional jaunt to the town in one of the farm wagons, perched up on a load of hay or wedged in between sacks of potatoes. Little Nellai's pretty face and fair hair very soon made her a pet of the lady at the big house, and it was from this kind, but mistaken person, from whom she obtained the seeds of discontent which at the early age of sixteen sent her into the town as a "help" in the kitchen of a man who kept a garage. It was from this place, on the main road to London, that Nellie Pope saw life for the first time and became aware of the fact that the world was a larger place than the little village perched up so near the sky, and caught the fever of discovery from the white dust that was left behind by the cars which sped to London one way, and to Oxford the other.

During this first year among shops and country louts, Nellie became aware of the fact that her pretty face and fair hair were very valuable assets. They procured her candies and many other little presents. They enabled her to make a choice among the young men with whom to walk out. They won smiles and pleasant words not only from the chauffeurs of the cars which came into her master's garage to be attended to, but also from their owners. Eventually it was one of these--more unscrupulous than most--who, staying for a few days at the "Red Lion," carried Nellie away with him to London, after several surreptitious meetings in the shady lane at the back of the churchyard. There it was that she saw life with very naked eyes, passed quickly from one so-called protector to another, was taken to the United States by one of a troupe of gymnasts, and then deserted. For two years she had been numbered among the night birds who flit out after dark--a member of the oldest profession in the world. There were, however, no moments in her life--hard, terrible and sordid as it was--when she looked back with anything like regret at those heavily thatched cottages which stood among their little gardens on the side of the hills. She could put up with the fatigue, brutality and uncertainty, the gross actuality of her present life, with courage, cheerfulness and even optimism, but the mere thought of the deadly monotony of that peaceful village, where summer followed winter with inexorable routine, made her shudder. The first pretty frock which had been given her by the lady of the big house had begun the work. The candies and the little presents from the country louts had completed it; and here she was, still very young, with a heart still kind and with a nature not yet warped and brutalized,--a danger to any community in which she lived, the deliberate spreader of something so frightful that science and civilization stood abashed in her presence.

Vanity has much to answer for, and out of nature spring many plants whose tempting berries are filled with poison.

It was in the bed of this wretched little woman that the unconscious Peter slept that night.

It was ten o'clock in the morning when the weary girl faced another day. She didn't grumble at the fact that she had been frequently disturbed and had watched many of the hours go by while she attended to Peter with something of the spirit of a Magdalen. She kept repeating to herself: "Poor boy! Poor boy! I wonder what his mother would say if she saw him like this."

She bathed his head, listened with astonishment to his babbling, and tried to piece together his incoherent pleading with Ranken Townsend and his declarations to Betty of his everlasting love. She listened with acute interest to the broken sentences which showed her that this great big man-boy was endeavoring to stir up his father to do something which seemed to him to be urgent and vital, and she wondered who Graham was, and Nicholas.

The first thing that she did when she was dressed and had put the kettle on her gas stove to boil, was to hunt through Peter's pockets to find out who he was. It was obvious to her that he was not so much a customer as a patient. She was a little afraid of accepting the whole responsibility of his case. The only letter she found was one signed "Graham," headed with the address of an office in Wall Street. In the corner of it was printed a telephone number. Graham, it was plain to her, was a Christian name. She could find no suggestion of the surname of the writer or of the man who lay so heavily in the next room.

"I dunno," she said to herself. "Something has got to be done. That boy's in a bad way. 'E's as 'ot as a pancake and I shouldn't think 'e's used to drink by the way 'e takes it. Suppose hanything should 'appen to 'im 'ere. I should look funny. What 'ad I better do?"

What she did was to have breakfast. During this hasty meal she thought things over--all her hard-won practicality at work in her brain. Then she put on her befeathered hat and her white gloves, a second-best pair of shoes, and went out and along the street, and into the nearest drug store. Here she entered the telephone booth and asked for the number that was printed on Graham's note. By that time it was just after nine o'clock. Having complied with the sharp request to slip the necessary nickel into the slot, an impatient voice recited the name of the firm. "I want to speak to Mr. Graham," she said. "No such name--? Well, keep your 'air on, Mister. I may be a client--a millionaire's wife--for all you know. I'm asking for Mr. Graham and as 'e's a friend of mine, and probably your boss, I'm not bothering about his surname. You know that as well as I do--Do I mean Mr. Graham Guthrie? Well, yes. Who else should I mean?" She gave a chuckle of triumph. "All right! I'll 'old on."

In a moment or two there was another voice on the telephone. "How d'you do?" she said. "I'm holding a letter signed by you, to 'Dear Peter,'--Ah! I thought that would make you jump--It doesn't matter what my name is. What's that--? Yes, I _do_ know where he is. I've been looking after 'im all night. Come up to my place right away and I'll be there to meet you. Dear Peter is far from well." She gave her address, and feeling immensely relieved left the box. But before she left the store she treated herself to a large box of talcum powder and a medium-sized bottle of her favorite scent, paying the bill with Peter's money. She considered herself to be fully justified.

On the way home she dropped into a delicatessen shop and bought some sausages, a bottle of pickles, a queer German salad of raw herring chopped up with carrots and onions, and carried these away with her. On her way up-stairs--the bald, hard stairs--she was greeted by a half-dressed person whose hair was in curl-papers and who had opened her door to pick up a daily paper which lay outside. "Hello, Miss Pope! Anything doing?" "Yes," said Nellie Pope, "the market's improving," and she laughed and went on.

Peter was still lying inert when she bent over him once more. She felt his head again, put the covers about his shoulders, pulled the blind more closely over the window, and after having put the food away returned to make up her face. She wasn't going to be caught looking what she called "second-rate" by this Mr. Graham Guthrie when he came.

There being no need to practice rigid economy at that moment, she gave herself a glass of beer and sat down to pass the time with her magazine, in which life was regarded through very rosy spectacles.

When finally she opened the door, in response to a loud and insistent ring, her answer to Graham's abrupt question: "Is my brother _here_?" was "Yes; why shouldn't he be?" She didn't like the tone. The word "here" was underlined in an unnecessarily unpleasant manner.

XII

"What's my brother doing here?" asked Graham.

"What d'you s'pose? Better go and ask 'im yourself."

"Where is he?"

"In bed, if you must know." The girl answered sharply. She found her caller supercilious. She followed him into the bedroom, telling herself that this was a nice way to be treated for all the trouble that she had taken.

Graham bent over the bed. "Good God!" he said. "What's the matter with him?"

"Drink!" said the girl drily.

"Drink! He never drinks."

"Then 'e must 'ave fallen off the water-wagon into a barrel of alcohol and opened 'is mouth too wide. Also 'e's got a fever."

Graham turned on the girl. "How did he get here?"

"In a cab. You don't s'pose I carried 'im, d'you?"

"Where'd you find him?"

"I didn't find 'im. Some one gave 'im to me as a present--a nice present, I must say."

"Don't lie to me!" cried Graham. "And don't be impudent."

"Impudent!" cried Nellie Pope, shrilly. "Here, you'd better watch what you're saying. I don't stand any cheek, I don't, neither from you nor anybody else, and I'm not in the habit of lying. I tell you I was made a present of 'im. I was told to take 'im 'ome by a young fellow on Forty-eighth Street, who 'ad called up a cab."

"Forty-eighth Street,--are you sure?"

"Well, if I don't know the streets, who does? The young fellow was a gent. He didn't talk, he gave orders. He was tall and slight and he 'ad kinky hair. Quite a nut. English, he was, any one could tell that."

"Good God!" thought Graham--"Kenyon." He sat down on the bed as though he had received a blow in the middle of his back. Only an hour before he had telephoned to Kenyon to say good-bye and wish him a pleasant crossing, and all that he said about Peter was that they had seen each other the night before. "No doubt he's all right," he had said, in answer to Graham's anxious question. What did it all mean? What foul thing had Kenyon done?

Graham had been up all night waiting for his brother. He had good news for him. He had pulled himself together and gone to see Ranken Townsend during the time that Peter had been walking the streets. To the artist he had made a clean breast of everything, so that he might, once for all, set Peter right in the eyes of his future father-in-law. That was the least that he could do. He had carried away from the studio in his pocket a short, generous and impulsive letter from the artist, asking Peter's forgiveness for not having accepted his word of honor. Armed with this, Graham had waited while hour after hour slipped by, growing more and more anxious as Peter did not appear. At breakfast he told his mother--in case she should discover that Peter had not returned--that he had stayed the night in Kenyon's rooms, as they had much to talk about and one or two things to arrange. He had been in the house when Kenyon had rung up, apologizing for being unable to come round, and thanking Mrs. Guthrie for her kindness and hospitality.

And there lay Peter inanimate and stupefied. In the name of all that was horrible, what had happened? Graham got up and faced the girl again. "You mustn't mind my being abrupt and rude," he said. "I'm awfully sorry. But this is my brother, my best pal, and I've been terribly anxious about him, and you don't know--nobody knows--what it means to me to see him like this."

"Ah! Now you're talking," said Nellie Pope. "Treat me nicely and there's nothing I won't do for you. If you ask me--and if I don't know a bit more about life than you do I ought to--I have a shrewd idea that your brother was made drunk,--that is, _doped_. 'E was quite gone when 'e was put into the cab, and from the way that kinky-headed chap laughed as we drove off together,--I mean me and your brother,--I should think that 'e 'ad it in for him, but of course I don't know hanything about that. Perhaps you do."

Graham shook his head. "No," he said; "I don't know anything about it either. But what are we going to do with him, that's the point? He's ill, that's obvious, and a doctor ought to see him at once."

"That's what I think," said the girl, "and I don't think 'e ought to be moved, 'e's so frightfully 'ot. 'E might catch pneumonia, or something. What I think you'd better do is to call up a doctor at once, get him to give your brother a dose and give me directions as to what to do. 'E can stay 'ere until 'e's all right again, and I'll nurse 'im."

"Yes, but why should you----?"

"Oh, bless you, that's all right. I'm glad to have something to do. Time hangs heavy. Besides, the poor boy is just like a baby. I like 'im and you needn't be afraid that I shall try to get anything out of 'im, because I shan't."

Graham snatched eagerly at the proffered assistance. He was intensely grateful. "Have you a telephone here?" he asked.

Nellie Pope laughed. "What d'you take me for?" she said. "I'm not a chorus lady. When I want to use the 'phone I pop round to the drug store and have a nickel's worth. That's how I got on to you."

Graham caught up his hat and left the apartment quickly. One of his college friends was a doctor and had just started to practice. He would ask him to come and see Peter. He agreed with the girl that it would be running a great risk to move Peter, and he was all against taking him home in his present condition. It would only lead to more lies and would certainly throw his mother into a dreadful state of anxiety.

While he was gone, Nellie Pope set to work to tidy up the bedroom. She put her boots away in a closet, got out a clean bedspread, rubbed the powder off her mirror and arranged her dressing-table. This doctor, whoever he was, should find her apartment as tidy as she could make it. It was a matter of pride with her. She still had some of that left. One thing, however, she was determined about. The doctor must not be allowed to look too closely at her.

XIII

Graham came out of the telephone box in the drug store. Dr. Harding was unable, he said, to leave his office for an hour and a half, when he would drive to Nellie Pope's address and meet Graham in her apartment.

But as he was hurrying back to Peter's bedside, Graham drew up suddenly. The rage that had entered into his soul when he had gathered that Kenyon was responsible for his brother's condition broke into a blaze. Almost before he knew what he was doing or what he was going to do when he got there, he hailed a passing taxi and told the man to drive to Kenyon's apartment. He remembered that the liner was not due to leave until two-thirty. Kenyon would therefore be at home for some time yet. He told himself that he _must_ see him--he must. He owed it to Peter first, and then to himself as Peter's brother and pal, to make Kenyon answer for this dirty and disloyal trick. Yes, that was it, he told himself as the cab bowled quickly to its destination. Kenyon must be made to answer, or, at any rate, to offer some extenuating explanation if he could. It would be something that would make him wake up in the middle of the night and curse himself if he let the opportunity slip out of his hands to face Kenyon up before he went immaculately, unquestioned and perhaps unpunished out of their lives. How could he face Peter when he was well again? How could he look at his own reflection in the looking-glass if, for reasons of his personal admiration of Kenyon and disinclination to force things to an issue, he let him escape without finding out the truth?

The cab stopped. Graham sprang out, paid the man, ran up the flight of stone steps and rang the bell. None too quickly it was answered by a girl with a mass of black hair and a pair of Irish eyes which had been put in with a dirty finger.

"Is Mr. Kenyon in?"

"Yes."

The hall was filled with baggage. A very distinct "K" was on all the baggage tabs.

"All right!" said Graham. "I know my way up."

Rather sharply Kenyon called out "Come in!" when Graham knocked on the door of the sitting-room.

In a much-waisted suit of brown clothes, a brown tie and a pair of brown shoes which were so highly polished as to look almost hot, Kenyon was standing with the telephone receiver to his ear. He was saying "Good-bye" to one of the men to whom Graham had been proud to introduce him and whose pockets he had already lightened by a fairly considerable sum. He finished speaking before turning to see who had entered, and hung up the receiver.

"Oh, hello, my dear fellow!" he said. "I didn't expect to see you. How extremely and peculiarly pleasant!"

Graham wondered if he would think so by the time that he had done with him. But, with a strong effort of will, he kept his self-control. He intended to let Kenyon give himself away. That seemed to be the best plan.

Kenyon gave him no chance to speak. "Not satisfied with wishing me 'bon voyage' over the wire, eh? By Jove, this is most friendly of you. You'll help kill the boring time before I drive off to the docks with all my duly and laboriously labelled luggage. Make yourself at home, old boy, and give me your news."

He took his hat and stick and yellow gloves out of the one comfortable chair and waved his hand toward it.

Graham remained standing. Having seen Peter lying in such a bed, inert and humiliated,--Peter, of all men,--he resented Kenyon's suave cordiality and glib complacency. "I've just come from Peter," he said.

Kenyon burst out laughing. "Oh, do tell me! How does he look? Is his head as big as the dome of St. Paul's this morning? It ought to be. I gave him the sort of mixture that would blow most men skyhigh. It's never been known to fail."

"It hasn't?" said Graham. "So you _did_ give it to him!" he added inwardly. "Good! You'll pay for _that_."

"I was amazed to see the thirsty way our abstemious Peter lapped it down. I've a sneaking notion that he liked it. It was on an empty stomach, too. He seems to have been in an emotional mood yesterday--tramping the streets. Ye gods, how these sentimentalists go to pieces under the influence of a bit of a girl! He came up here fairly late, just after Belle--I mean, just after----"

"Belle? Was Belle here last night, then?" Graham's voice rang out sharply.

"Yes," said Kenyon, with a curious smile. After all, what did it matter now who knew? He was on the verge of sailing and he hoped that he might never see this family of Guthries again. "Yes, Belle was here."

There was a look in the corners of Kenyon's eyes that sent a spasm of fear all through Graham's body. What was this man not capable of doing since he had deliberately turned Peter, his friend, over to a street-walker, having first rendered him senseless? "Then I'm here for Belle, as well," he said to himself, "and whatever you did you'll pay for that too."

There was an empty cardboard collar-box on the floor. Kenyon gave it a spiteful kick. "Yes, Belle and I had,--what shall I call it?--a rather tender parting scene here last night,--quite tender, in fact. All very amusing in the sum total of things, eh? I was peculiarly ready for Peter when he dropped in. And, by the way, how on earth did you find out where he spent the night, learning, I trust, to shake off some of his Quaker notions?"

"She rang me up," said Graham, whose fists were clenched so tightly that every finger contained a pulse. He was almost ready to hit--almost. He was only waiting for one other proof of this dirty dog's treachery.

"Oh, did she? Found your name and address in Peter's pocket, I suppose. Well, she came along last night at the exact psychological moment. The alacrity with which she took dear old drunken Peter off my hands at the merest hint had a certain amount of pathos about it. _He's_ off his immaculate perch now, eh? _He's_ left his tuppenny halo on a pretty sordid hat-peg, at last, eh? He'll thank me for having done it for him one of these days, I'll be bound."

Graham went slowly over to him. "Not one of these days," he said with extreme distinctness. "Through me, thank God, to-day--now."

Kenyon darted a quick look at the man who had always caused him a considerable amount of inward laughter, whom he had labelled as a precocious provincial. He saw that his face had gone as white as a stone--that his nostrils were all distended and that his eyes seemed to have become bloodshot. No coward, Kenyon had an inherent detestation of a fracas, especially when he was dressed for the street. He decided to avert a row with a touch of autocratic authority. It had worked before.

"Let there be no vulgar display of pugilism here," he said, sharply. "If you don't like my methods, get out!"

Everything in Graham's nature seemed to have become concentrated in one big ball of desire to hit and hit, and hit again--to hear the heavy thud of his blows on that man's body--to see him lying squirming and broken on the carpet with a receipt in full upon his face for all that he had done.

"Put up your fist," he said, "or I shall have to hit you cold."

"Curse you, get out!" cried Kenyon, catching Graham one on the mouth before he was ready.

Graham laughed. He needed that. By jove, he needed that. He let out his left. "That's for Peter," he said.

Kenyon staggered. His left eye seemed to fill. With a yell of pain he jumped in and hit wildly.

Graham waited a second chance and got it. "And that's for Belle," he said. And his knuckles bled with the contact of teeth.

Kenyon went in again. Chairs fell over and the table was pushed aside. And all the time that he failed to reach Graham's face he screamed like a horse whose stable is in flames.

But Graham, cold, icy cold, and cooler than he had ever been in his life, played with him. He had never been so much a man in his life. He warded and guarded and waited hoping that he might once more feel the sting of pain that would make his last blow unforgettable--epoch-making.

He got it,--but with Kenyon's foot.

And again Graham laughed,--for joy--for very joy. Now he could hit, and hit honestly.

"You little gentleman!" he said. "You perfect little gentleman--I've paid you for Peter, and for Belle. Here's my debt, with a hundred per cent, interest and then some."

The blow, hard and firm from the full shoulder, caught Kenyon on the point of the jaw, lifted him off his feet and laid him out full stretch on the broad of his back.

For several moments, breathing hard, Graham stood over him, looking down at the dishevelled, unconscious dandy, with his bad blood all over his face and clothes. His collar had sprung, his beautiful brown tie had gone round under his ear, his shirt cuffs were dabbled with red, one eye was bunged up and his mouth was all swollen.

Then Graham rang the bell, and while waiting tidied himself up in front of the glass in which he now felt that he could look.

The girl came in and gave a shrill cry.

"Just see to that man, please. Cold water at once will be the best thing."

He caught up his hat, went out, shut the door, ran down-stairs, let himself into the street and was out of sight and into a taxicab before the girl had recovered herself.

"Paid in full," he said breathlessly to himself, as he bound up his knuckles--"in full."

XIV

With wide-eyed anxiety, Graham, having driven straight back, waited for the doctor's verdict. The two young men stood alone in the little sitting-room. With a touch of delicacy, which they were quick to notice, Nellie Pope made no attempt to follow them in.

"Um!" said Dr. Harding. "A very close shave from pneumonia. He can't be moved yet, unless, of course, you'd like me to send for an ambulance. That's up to you."

Graham shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't want that. I think he'd better be--I mean I don't want my father--Oh, well, I dare say you understand."

"Yes," said Dr. Harding, "I'm afraid I do. God knows what the percentage of disaster is from men having soused themselves like that. It seems to me that your brother, who had obviously caught a severe chill, must have set out deliberately to make himself drunk, and mixed everything in sight."

Graham held his peace. But his blood tingled at the knowledge that he had given Kenyon something that he would never forget and which would make it necessary for him to remain in the seclusion of his state-room for some days at least.

The young doctor sat down and wrote a prescription and went on quickly to tell Graham what to do. Finally he rose. "I'll look in again this evening," he said. "You'll be here, won't you? Of course we shall get him all right in a couple of days or so,--that is, right enough to go home,--but----"

"But what?" asked Graham.

"Well," said Dr. Harding, "I may have to leave the rest of the treatment to your father." He shook his head several times on his way to the door. He had taken one or two close, examining looks of Nellie Pope.

"Mr. Guthrie, you're wanted."

Graham turned sharply. Nellie Pope, waiting until the doctor had gone, put her head in at the door. "Come on in," she said. "Come on in!"

Graham followed her into the bedroom and bent over Peter. Opening his eyes with some difficulty, as though they hurt him, Peter looked about. The room was strange. The face of the girl was strange. The whole thing seemed to belong to a dream. Then he recognized his brother. "You got away, then," he said.

"Got away?"

"Yes. By Jove, what a blaze! The last time I saw you, you were carrying mother along the passage. I could hardly see you for smoke. I got Betty out into the street and dived back into the house. Father was the only one left. Good God, what awful flames! The library was red hot. I got into the middle of it, choking and yelling for father, when something fell on my head. Is he--dead?"

"No," said Graham. "He's all right."

A little smile broke out on Peter's face and he sighed and turned over and went to sleep again.

Nellie Pope made a comical grimace. "I don't wonder that 'e's been dreaming about a fire," she whispered. She arranged the covers over Peter's shoulder with a deft and sympathetic hand, and then took Graham's arm and led him out into the passage. "You've got your work. Push off. I'll see to the medicine when it comes. Don't you worry. Get back as soon as you can, and while you're away I'll look after 'im like a sister. I like 'im, poor boy! My goodness! why don't somebody put the lid on all the distilleries? Half the troubles in the world 'ud be prevented that way!"

Very reluctantly Graham acted on the girl's suggestion that he should return to his office. He was in the middle of very important work. He held out his hand. "You're a damned good little sort," he said, "and I'm intensely grateful."

Nellie Pope's eyes filled with tears. It had been a long time since she had been treated so humanly or had her hand so warmly clasped. But she screwed out a laugh and waved her hand to Graham as he let himself out.

She spent the rest of the day in and out of the bedroom. With her eyes continually on her clock, she devoted herself untiringly and with the utmost efficiency to looking after her patient. To the very instant she gave him his medicine and said cheery, pleasant things to him every time she had to wake him up to administer it. It was an odd and wonderful day for her, as well as for Peter,--filled with many touches of curious comedy, the comedy of life--and many moments of queer pathos. Once she had to listen to a little outburst of incoherent love, when Peter insisted on telling her what an angel Betty was. Once she was obliged to hear what Peter had to say about his father, from which she gathered that this man was responsible for the burning house from which this boy had only just been able to escape alive, having saved his family. The obsession of fire remained with Peter until the evening, when he woke up with a clear brain, and having taken his medicine, looked at her with new eyes.

"What's all this?" he asked quietly. "Where am I, and who are you?"

"Oh, that's all right," said Nellie Pope.

"Is it? Are you a nurse?"

"Yes," she said.

"Is this a hospital?"

"Yes,--that is, a nursing home," she said.

"Oh!" said Peter. "Where's Kenyon?"

"I don't know, dearie."

"What on earth was that filth that he gave me to drink? I carried the books into his room, and then I'm hanged if I can remember--I've got a most frightful headache. Every time I move my head seems to split in half. How long have I been here? Was I poisoned, or what?"

"Now don't you talk or you'll get me into trouble. You go off to sleep like a good boy. You'll be all right in the morning."

"Shall I? That's good." And he heaved a big sigh and obeyed. It was extraordinary how sleep came to his rescue.

He was still asleep when Graham came back at six o'clock. Nellie Pope opened the door to him. "'E's getting on fine," she said. "You can take that line out of your forehead. 'E's been talking quite sensibly to me. What I don't know about your father and your family isn't worth knowing."

Graham tiptoed into the bedroom, drew a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. And while he waited for the time to arrive for Peter's next dose many strange things ran through his brain,--his own precocity--his own desire to be smart and become a man of the world--his own evening in the little shabby theatrical lodgings in Oxford with Kenyon--his dealings with Ita Strabosck--the night he had spent in his bed-room when Peter took his razors away--that awful hour when he sneaked into his father's laboratory and under the pressure of great trouble forged his name. The only thing that gave him any sense of pleasure out of all this was the fact that he carried in his pocket a warm and spontaneous letter from Ranken Townsend, which he knew would be better to Peter than pints of medicine.

And while he sat watching, Nellie Pope ate her sausage in the kitchen and finished the instalment of the love story in her magazine.

What a world, O my masters!

XV

It was late when Graham let himself into his father's house that night. He had done many things that day. He had also been through much anxiety. He felt that he deserved the right to turn in at once and sleep the sleep of the just. But Kenyon had said that Belle had been alone in his rooms the night before and the queer expression that had come into his eyes as he made the remark lived most uneasily in Graham's memory. He now knew Nicholas Kenyon to be a skunk--an unscrupulous individualist devoid of loyalty, incapable of feeling true friendship and in every way unfit to have any dealings, unwatched, with a girl unless she was in his own set or belonged to the same class as the two chorus girls for whom he had waited outside the stage door of the Oxford Theatre.

He was well aware of the fact that Belle had been something more than merely attracted by Kenyon. He had even hoped that she might be engaged to be married to him, being very proud to believe that some day soon she might become the wife of the man under whose spell he, like all the rest of the family, had fallen. Now, however, in the light of Kenyon's hideous treatment of Peter, he saw his one-time hero with eyes from which all the glamour of his appearance had disappeared and he was filled with an overwhelming desire to see Belle at once and make it clear to her, bluntly and finally, that she must clear Kenyon out of her mind as a house is rid of vermin. Belle was, as he well knew, a high-spirited, amazingly imperious, independent girl, with strong emotions. She was not one who would be turned lightly, or even driven, out of a line of thought. She was, on the contrary, as difficult to treat as an unbroken filly and could only be managed with the lightest of hands. If she really and truly loved Kenyon and still believed in him, he knew that he could not say anything that would prejudice him in her estimation, even by telling her what he had done to Peter. She would be able to produce reasons, however far-fetched, to make that incident seem less ugly. There was, however, the chance--just the chance--that she would be open to conviction. After much inward argument and hesitation he decided to go up to Belle's room, and if she were not asleep, to have a little talk with her and find out how the land lay, and if he could see any possibility of adding to his punishment of Kenyon to do so by putting him in his true colour before Belle.

It took him some time to come to this decision and screw up his courage to face Belle. For nearly an hour he paced up and down the quiet library, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Belle was likely to tell him to go and hang himself if she considered that he was butting into her private affairs. He knew this,--no one better. He had often done so before. He decided, however, to run this risk and, in the hope that she might still be up, went upstairs and stood for a moment listening outside her door. He could hear no sound in her room, no movement, no creak of a drawer being opened or shut. He knocked softly and waited,--was just going to knock again when the door was opened.

With her beautiful black hair done for the night and a pink kimono over her night-dress, Belle stood in the doorway with an expression of surprised inquiry in her eyes. These two had not taken the trouble to be very good friends for some years.

"Oh, it's you, Graham," she said, but made no move.

"It's awfully late, I know; but, if you're not too tired, may I come in?" Graham hated himself for being self-conscious. It seemed absurd with his own sister. He wished then that he had not been quite so selfish and self-contained since he had considered himself to be a man, and had gone out of his way to keep up his old boyish relations with Belle.

He was a little surprised when she said, "Come in, dear," and made way for him. He noticed quickly as soon as she stood under the light that her eyes were red and swollen, and that there was a most unusual air about her of gentleness and dejection. He noticed, too, with immense relief, that a large photograph of Kenyon in hunting-kit which he had seen standing on her dressing-table had been taken away. A good sign!

The room was very different from Ethel's. It had nothing of that rather anæmic ultra-modern air so carefully cultivated by the younger girl. On the contrary, everything in it was characteristic of Belle. It was full of ripe colours and solid comfort. A mass of silver things jostled each other untidily on the dressing-table. A collection of monthly fashion papers with vivid decorative covers lay on a heap on a chair, and a novel, open in the middle, had been flung, face down, on the sofa. There was no attempt at carefully shaded lights. They were all turned on and were reflected from the long glasses in a large mahogany wardrobe. The carpet all round the dressing-table was bespattered with white powder.

"I was reading when I heard your knock," she said,--"at least I was pretending to read. Sleep was miles away."

Graham sat down, hanging a pair of stockings over the arm of the chair. "Why?" he asked.

"Oh, I don't know, I've been thinking,--for a change. It's such a new thing for me that it knocked sleep out of my head. Not nice thoughts, either."

She seemed glad to talk, Graham thought. "Anything the matter, Bee?" he asked.

"I guess it's nearly a century since you called me Bee," she said with a queer little laugh. "Would you say that anything was the matter if you had just picked yourself out of the ruins of a house that had fallen about your ears?"

Graham got up suddenly, sat on the sofa at Belle's side and put his arms round her shoulder. "Don't dodge behind phrases, old girl," he said. "Just tell me in plain English. Let me help you if I can."

But Belle shook him off,--not angry with him so much as with herself. She detested weakness. This unexpected kindness on Graham's part made her feel like crying again. In her heart she longed for some one to whom she could pour out her soul, and Graham's affection almost caught her before she could stop herself. Not to him, she told herself, nor to any member of her family, was she going to confess the sort of thoughts that had choked her brain ever since that hour alone with Kenyon. Not even to Betty, to whom she told most things, was she going to lay bare the fact that, in the cold light of day, she found herself deeply hurt and deeply humiliated at Kenyon's treatment of her. In fact, she had herself only that night begun to realize the state of her feelings and was still suffering under the discovery.

Graham, whose nature and character were as much like those of Belle as though they were twins, caught her mental attitude as she stood struggling between pride and a desire to tell the truth. It was as plain to him as though she had already confessed that Kenyon had done something which had shaken her belief in him. His photograph, which had dominated her room, had been put away. Her eyes were red and swollen. All his sympathy was stirred. At the same time he rejoiced in the eager thought that he had it in his power to clear Kenyon finally out of her mind.

He set to work quietly. "I'm going to tell you about Peter," he said.

She turned quickly. "Peter? There's nothing wrong with Peter, is there?"

"God knows how much wrong there is. I'm going to tell you all I know. We're all in this,--through Kenyon, and because we've been thoughtless fools running amuck through life."

The idea of there being anything wrong with Peter brought Belle quickly out of self-analysis and the self-indulgence of her own pain. "Don't beat about the bush," she said. "Please tell me. You told mother this morning that he had stayed with Nicholas last night."

"That was a lie. This is what happened. After a rotten day worrying about an upset with Betty, he went to see Kenyon late last night. He'd had nothing to eat. I believe because Kenyon had been disappointed about something earlier in the evening,--but I only make a guess at that from the way he looked when I saw him to-day,--he deliberately took it out on Peter."

"On Peter? How?" Belle understood this disappointment only too well.

"He made him drunk."

"Drunk!--Peter!"

"Dead drunk,--by doping him with a fearful mixture of all the drinks he had. He had always threatened to do it, and this time he caught Peter napping. That was a foul enough thing to do anyway, but it didn't satisfy him. He got him into the street and instead of putting him into a cab and sending him home he called a passing woman----"

"Oh, no!" cried Belle.

"Yes,--and gave Peter over to her and there he's been, in her bed, in a little hole of an apartment, ill and poisoned, ever since."

"Oh, my God!" cried Belle.

"The woman rang me up early this morning and I got Ralph Harding to go and see what he could do. I've been there most of the day,--except for ten minutes with Kenyon--the best ten minutes I ever put in--ever."

He got up and stood looking at Belle with a gleam of such intense satisfaction in his eyes that she guessed what he had done.

"That's our admirable friend Kenyon," he added. "That's the man who shared rooms with Peter--whose charm of manner got us all at Oxford, and who was made one of the family by father and mother when he came to this country. I hit him for Peter, for you and for myself in that glorious ten minutes to-day. I left him lying on the floor in his rooms all over his own black blood, and if ever I meet him again, in any part of the world, at any time of my life, I'll give him another dose of the same sort--for Peter, for you and for me--That's what I came to tell you, Bee."

He bent forward and kissed her, turned round and left the room.

That was Kenyon, Graham had said.

Standing where he had left her, with this story of utter and incredible treachery in her ears, Belle added another count to Graham's indictment,--that of trying to seduce her without even the promise of marriage, when her grief at parting with him made her weak.

For a moment she stood chilled and stunned. That was Kenyon--All along she had been fooled--all along he had been playing with her as though she amounted merely to a light creature with whom men passed the time. It was due to her father,--of all men, her father,--that she stood there that night, humiliated but unharmed, with her pride all slashed and bleeding, her self-respect at a discount, but with nothing on her conscience that would make her face the passing days with fear and horror.

She suddenly flamed into action. "Yes; that's Kenyon!" she thought, and making a sort of blazing pounce on the middle drawer of her dressing-table she pulled it open, took out the large photograph of a man in hunting-kit, and with queer, choking cries of rage and scorn, tore it into shreds and stamped upon the pieces.

XVI

Belle got very little sleep that night. Having finally decided, on top of her talk with Graham, that Kenyon had intended to treat her much in the same way as he had treated Peter, she endeavored to look back honestly and squarely at the whole time during which that super-individualist had occupied her thoughts. She saw herself as a very foolish, naïve girl, without balance, without reserve and without the necessary caution in her treatment of men which should come from proper training and proper advice.

She laid no blame upon her mother,--that excellent little woman whose God-sent optimism made her believe that all her children were without flaw and that the world was full of people with good hearts and good intentions. She blamed only herself, and saw plainly enough that she had allowed her head to be turned by her father's sudden acquisition of wealth which made it unnecessary for her to be anything more than a sort of butterfly skimming lightly through life without any duties to perform--without any work to occupy her attention--without any hobbies to fill her mind and give her ambition. She felt like some one who had just escaped from being run over in the streets, or who, by some divine accident, had been turned back from the very edge of an abyss. It was indeed a night that she could never forget in all her life. She lay in bed in the dark room with her eyes wide open, hearing all the hours strike one by one, watching herself with a sort of terror and amazement passing through Oxford. All the incidents that had been crowded into that short and what had appeared to be glorious week, came up in front of her again, especially the incident in the back-water with Kenyon and the night of the ball at Wadham College. These were followed in her mind by the scene in the library in her father's house, and finally that dangerous hour in Kenyon's rooms when, but for the intervention of that man who seemed of so little account, she might have been placed among those unfortunate girls of whom the world talks very harshly and who pay a terrible price for their foolishness and ignorance. And when finally she got up, tired-eyed but saner than she had been since those good, strenuous days of hers at her college when she had intended to make art her mission in life, she told herself with a characteristic touch of humour that the reformed criminal was a very good hand at preaching, and made up her mind to go along to Ethel and improve the occasion. It was very obvious to her that if she did not do this nobody would, and she was eager to give a sort of proof of the fact that she was grateful for her own escape by giving her young sister the benefit of her suffering. And so she put on her dressing-gown and went to her sister's room--the little sister of whom she was so fond and proud.

Ethel was sitting at her dressing-table doing her hair. There was a petulant and discontented expression on her face. Still shamming illness, she had not yet recovered from the smart of what she called Jack's impertinence. There was a surprise in store for her,--she who believed that she had managed so successfully to play the ostrich.

"Why, Belle!" she said. "What's the matter? You look as though you had been in a railway accident."

Belle sat down, not quite sure how she would begin or of the sort of reception that she would receive. She always felt rather uncouth in the presence of this calm, self-assured, highly finished little sister of hers. "Well," she said, "I have been through a sort of railway accident and a good many of my bones seem to have been broken,--that's why I'm here. I want to stop you, if I can, from going into the same train."

"I don't think I quite understand you."

"I don't suppose you do, my dear, but you shall--believe me." And then, in the plainest English she gave Ethel the story of her relations with Kenyon, without in any way sparing herself. And when she came to the parting scene in Kenyon's rooms she painted a picture that was so strong and vivid--so appalling in its proof of foolishness, that she made even Ethel forget her complacency and sit with large, frightened eyes.

Then she got up and began to walk about. "I'm not a fool," she said, "and this thing is going to teach me something. Also, I'm not a coward and I've told you all this for a reason. You think that you're a very wise little person, kiddie, but in reality you're no better than I am, and just as sentimental and every bit as unwatched and as resentful of guidance. Why are you here instead of being at school? You think no one knows that. Well, I do. You're playing ducks and drakes with mother and father and your education in order to have what we call a 'good time.' You have shammed sickness so that you could have an adventure with the boy next door."

"How d'you know that?" cried Ethel.

"Easily enough, my dear. I was told by the girl who used to bring your thermos up to this room and who had caught you with the boy. Two days ago she left to be married, but before she went she blurted out the whole story. It wasn't for me to interfere then. I didn't much care, to tell the truth,--in fact, I thought it was rather a good joke. I rather admired you for the cunning way in which you had arranged everything. I thought you were a good sport. I don't know how far it has gone, but I hope to Heaven that you've not been quite so insane as I was. I'm not going to tell mother or do the elder sister stunt, or anything of that sort. I'm just going to ask you to chuck it all and go back to school and play the game for a change, and to try to bear in mind that you owe father and mother something,--a thing we all seem to have forgotten,--and when you do go back, just remember--and always remember--what I've told you about myself. We're very much alone, you and I,--like two girls who are staying in a house with somebody else's father and mother,--and so let's help each other and get a little honesty and self-respect and see things straight. What d'you say, dear little sister?"

Ethel got up, and with a complete breakdown of all the artificiality so carefully instilled into her by her fashionable school, slipped into her sister's arms and burst out crying.

XVII

It was not until the next afternoon that Peter was allowed to get up. His superb constitution had stood, rock-like, against the chill which the doctor's medicine had helped to throw off. He had done full justice to a broiled chicken which Nellie Pope had cooked for him; but when, having put on his clothes, he stood in front of the looking-glass, he felt as though he had been under a steam-roller and flattened out.

"Good Lord!" he said, when he saw his pale, unshaven face. "Good Lord!" But he was very happy. He had read and re-read Ranken Townsend's generous apology. Betty was waiting for him--thank God for that.

And then he began to look round. Was this a nursing home? The dressing-table, with its tins of powder and a large dilapidated puff, its red stuff for lips, its shabby little brushes and a comb with several of its teeth gone, looked as though it belonged to a woman,--poor and struggling. The door of the closet, which gaped a little, showed dresses hanging and a pair of very high-heeled boots with white uppers. He opened a drawer in the dressing-table. It was full of soiled white gloves, several veils neatly rolled up, and a collection of small handkerchiefs. A strong, pungent scent rose up from them.

An ugly suspicion crept slowly into his mind. He looked at the bed with its frilled pillows, at the flower papered bare walls, at the rather worn blue carpet, at the flimsy wrap hanging limply on a peg on the door of the bath-room, at the little bed-room slippers tucked away beneath one of the white, painted chairs----

He turned and called out: "Nurse! Nurse!"

Something in his tone brought Nellie Pope in quickly.

He was standing with his hand on the big brass knob of the bed. "You told me that this was a nursing home," he said.

The girl laughed. How should she know what Peter had done with his life--of the ideal that he kept so steadily in front of him? She only knew the other kind of men. "So it is," she said. "It's _my_ home and I've had to be your nurse. Pretty well put, I think. Don't you? 'Ow d'you feel, dearie? A bit groggy on your pins?"

The girl's cockney accent, her made-up face, her cheap, smart clothes were noticed by him for the first time. Her insinuating, cheerful manner and that sort of hail-fellow-well-met intimacy that was all about her, came to him with a new and appalling meaning. He had been spoken to by just such women in London after dark, and on Broadway and its side streets as he passed. They belonged to the night life of all great cities. They were the moths who came out attracted by the glare of electric light. Good God! What was he doing in that place?

The keen remembrance of this woman's inestimable kindness, the supreme lack of selfishness which had inspired her to bend so frequently over his bed, the charity of her treatment of him as he lay ill and helpless, made him anxious above everything else not to hurt her feelings. But there were things that he must know at once,--urgent, vital things which might affect all the rest of his life. There was Betty his love-girl--the girl who was to be his wife--who was waiting for him with the most exquisite and whole-hearted trust----

"I want you to tell me how I came here," he said.

Nellie Pope went over to the dressing-table. "That's easy," she replied lightly, adding a new coat of color to her lips. "The night before last, not having 'ad any luck, I was 'aving a last look round and 'appened to be in Forty-eighth Street just as you staggered out of a 'ouse on the arm of a young gent. I reckoned 'e didn't 'ave any use for me, being outside 'is own place, but I passed 'im the usual greetin' from force of 'abit, just as 'e 'ad called up a taxi. With a funny look on 'is face,--a curly smile I called it to meself,--'e suddenly gave me orders, lumped you into the cab, blind to the wide, and told me to get in and take you 'ome, and 'elp meself to any money you 'ad on you. Well, I did, and the next instalment of the serial you know as well as I do. Feeling weak, old dear?"

Peter sat heavily on the foot of the bed.

Nellie Pope went on,--simply and naturally, like one who is glad to talk, glad to hear her own voice, indescribably, pathetically glad to be in the company of a man who asked for nothing, who was not a guest, but a friend--a fellow-creature down on his luck. "Me and Graham," she said,--"and, I say, what a good-looking boy that is, and fairly devoted to you, dearie,--well, 'im and me think that you must 'ave done something to get the goat of this young feller. 'E doped you, that's certain, and then passed you off on me. Enjoyed the joke, as it were, too, according to what I noticed. Is that likely?"

Peter didn't answer. The joke--? Back into his mind came the many things that Kenyon had said to him at Oxford: "You need humanizing, old boy. You want to be hauled off that self-made pedestal of yours. One of these days you'll come to an unholy crash--" Back into his mind also came Kenyon's taunts made to him as he stood with his back to the fireplace in the library the night after they had returned from having seen Ita Strabosck: "You're blind! Blind! I tell you, and in that room sits a man whose patients you may become."

Utterly ignorant of the feeling of revenge which had surged through Kenyon's brain after Belle had been saved by the Doctor, it was borne in on Peter, as he sat on the bed of this poor little night-bird, that Kenyon had set out on purpose--with calculated deliberation--to make him human, as he called it, before he returned to England. He had made him drunk in order to carry out the joke. He had given him something to render him insensible, well knowing that in no other way could this fiendish desire be fulfilled.

"What time is my brother coming?" he asked.

Nellie Pope was busy daubing powder on her face. "Not until about nine o'clock," she said. "'E and me talked it over this morning. The idea is that you're coming in on the train that arrives at the Grand Central at eight-forty-five. Now don't forget this. You stayed the night in your friend's apartment, but you couldn't see 'im off the next morning because you'd taken on a bit of business for 'im which meant going out of town. Your brother is going to meet you at the station. That's the story. And you're going 'ome together. 'E went back to get one of your bags. 'E will sneak it out of the 'ouse and bring it round here. Oh, I think we're pretty good stage managers, 'im and me. You see, the notion is that Ma mustn't be upset. Poor little Ma!"

"What's to-day?" asked Peter, whose whole body seemed suddenly to have been frozen.

"Sunday, dearie."

"Then I've been here two nights?"

"That's so," said the girl.

Peter was consumed with a desire to explore the apartment. He wanted to discover whether there was another bedroom. "Are you comfortable here?" he asked, a little clumsily.

Nellie Pope was rather flattered at his interest and so genuinely delighted to see this great big man-boy on his feet again that she could have broken into a dance. "Come and 'ave a look at my suite," she said, laughing at the word she chose. "You know the bedroom,--I don't think you'll forget that in a 'urry. On the right I 'ave the sitting-room which I only use for my customers, preferring to sit in the kitchen, which we now come to." She led him into it, with her hand on his arm--she was apeing the manner and the phraseology of the guide. "In this bright little apartment, beautifully furnished with a gas stove and dresser--not exactly Jacobean--a plain, but serviceable Deal table and a nice piece of linoleum which 'as worn very well, the sometimes popular Miss Nellie Pope passes most of 'er leisure. 'Ere she cooks her own meals and washes up after 'erself,--she's a very neat little thing,--and before going out on the long trail in all weathers, reads about life with a big L in the magazines, in which 'eroes with curly 'air, who stand about six-feet-six, make 'onest love to blondes with 'eads like birds' nests, who are nearly always about six-feet-one, and never fail to wear silk stockings,--and there you 'ave it. A charming suite for a single lady who earns 'er own living. The only drawback to it is that the rent 'as to be paid monthly in advance, and the blighter who collects it gives no grace. This is the sort of thing: 'Say! Got that rent?' 'Well--' 'Come on now, ain't got no time to waste here. Pay up or get out--' I tell you what it is, dearie, there's a little Florida in Hell for them men who let out apartments to us girls, and the heat there is something intense." She laughed, but there was a curious quiver to it.

Behind all her badinage and cheery pluck Peter could see a vein of terror which touched his sympathies. Poor little painted, unfortunate thing! Was there no other way in which she could live and keep her head above water? He sat down and leaned on the table with his elbows. "Will you tell me," he said, "what brought you to this?"

"Brought me to it?" Nellie Pope shot out a laugh. "You dear, funny old thing!" she said. "Nothing brought me it. I chose it."

"Chose it! Chose _this_?"

"Yes, this! A great many of us choose it. It's the easiest way. That shocks yer, doesn't it,--you who come from a comfortable home and whose sisters 'ave everything they want. But, you listen to this and don't be too fast to pass judgment. I was one of a big brood of unnecessary kids. My father earned fourteen shillings a week by grubbing in the earth from daybreak till sundown and my mother took in washing. We lived perched up on a 'ill among a dozen dirty little cottages. What was the outlook for me? Being dragged up with meat once a week and as a maid-of-all-work down in the town, being ordered about by a drab of a tradesman's wife, with not enough wages to buy a new 'at and a little bit of finery for Sundays, and then be married to a lout who got drunk regularly every Saturday night and made me what mother was,--a dragged, anæmic, dull animal woman, working up to the time I 'ad a baby and working directly afterwards,--no colour, no lights, no rush and bustle, no decent clothes to put on, no independence. Yes, I chose it, and if I 'ad my time over again I should choose it again. See! It's the easiest way. Oh, yes, we die young and nobody knows where we're buried, but we've 'ad our day, and it's the day that every woman fights for, the same as every man. Oh, by the way, 'ere's your purse!" She pushed it over to Peter.

"My purse?" he said.

"Yes; don't you recognize it? It hasn't got so much in it as it 'ad, because I was told to 'elp meself, and I did. I 'ave jotted down what I 'ave taken; 'ere's the account." She held out a piece of paper on which Peter could see a list of spendings, which included a taxicab fare and a nickel for telephoning. At the end of it there was an item entitled "Fee, thirty dollars."

Peter shuddered. He pushed the remainder of the money back to her across the table. "Please keep it," he said.

Nellie Pope laughed again. She was full of laughter. "I hoped you'd say that," she said. "It'll come in mighty useful."

Peter felt in his pocket and took out his cheque-book. He looked about and saw a bottle of ink and a pen on the dresser, with a piece of dilapidated blue blotting-paper. Watched with peculiar interest and excitement by Nellie Pope, he got up, went over to the dresser and wrote a cheque. "Will you accept this?" he asked. "I wish I could make it larger. But if it was ten times the amount it couldn't possibly cover my gratitude to you. You've been awfully kind to me. Thank you, Nellie." He held it out.

The girl took it and gave a little cry. "Five hundred dollars! Oh, Gawd! I didn't know that there was so much money in the world." She burst into tears, but went on talking. "Mostly I can't afford to cry, because it washes the paint off my face, and it's very expensive. But what do I care, with this blooming cheque in my 'and? I shall be able to take a little 'oliday from business and, my word, that's a treat. God makes one or two gentlemen from time to time, 'pon my soul he does. Put it there, Peter." She held out her hand with immense cordiality and gratitude, and Peter took it warmly.

But he had discovered what he wanted to know. There was only one bed in that apartment, and back into his mind came Kenyon's words. "Blind! Blind!--both of you--and in that room sits a man whose patients you may become."

XVIII

Graham was before his time. He hurried in, as anxious to get Peter out of that apartment as Peter was to go. He found his brother sitting on one side of the kitchen table and Nellie Pope on the other. Both had magazines. The girl tore herself out of the marble house of the heroine's father with reluctance. Peter had been holding his magazine upside down for an hour. He had been looking right through it and into his father's laboratory. There was not even the remote suggestion of a smile on his pale face when Graham threw open the door.

"Come on, old man," urged Graham. "The taxi's waiting."

Peter got up. "Well, good-bye, Nellie," he said. "I'll come and see you soon."

The girl darted a quick look at him. She saw that she was mistaken. "Oh, yes, that'll be very kind of you. I 'aven't got any friends."

"Yes you have," said Graham,--"two."

Nellie Pope led the way into the narrow passage, stood on tiptoe, made a long arm and got Peter's hat off the peg. Then she stood in front of him and her lips trembled, although her well-practised smile curled up the corners of her mouth. "Not good-bye, but orevoy, eh? Well, good luck and God bless you. I shall miss you both most awfully. It's been a fair treat to 'ave you 'ere."

Peter waved his hand and went down the bare stairs. His knees felt weak and shaky and his eyes seemed to be at the back of his head. He drew back to let a woman pass. She cocked her golden head at him with an enquiring eye and a flash of teeth and pushed open the half-closed door of an apartment. Her high-pitched metallic voice rang out. "Say, Kid, there goes Nellie Pope's boarder. By Gosh, don't yer think some one oughter stop her?"

The two boys drove home in silence. They had both caught the meaning of those significant words.

Graham, the self-imagined man of the world, who had picked up a large collection of half-facts--as all the precocious do--but who, for all that, or in spite of that, had walked into the trap set by Ita Strabosck without the faintest perception of his danger, threw those words aside. Everything would be right, he told himself, and if _he_ had been coming out of Nellie Pope's apartment in the ordinary way and had overheard her rival's loud comment, he would simply have shrugged his shoulders, like the rest of the young men of his type and spirit, and knowing only the tail end of the truth, told himself that all men take "chances" and that the odds were largely in his favor. And what would this attitude of puerile bravado have proved? That he and all the men like him were just as much a menace to society from knowing the half-facts which did nothing more for them than allow them to take "chances," as the men who were wholly ignorant and so blundered blindly into tragedy.

To Peter, the words of the painted woman came as a finishing blow. In his crass and culpable ignorance, into which Kenyon had flung one most terrific fact, he came away from Nellie Pope not knowing whether he was immune--not able to assure himself that he was safe. Think of it! Big and strong as he was, he remained a mere child in the matter of plain, necessary and urgent truths, and if ever a man knew himself for a fool he was Peter Guthrie, as he drove home.

No less grateful to God than ever for having been assisted to go through Harvard and Oxford clean and straight, he cursed himself for not having sought out the facts of life,--not from grinning and salacious arguments of half-informed young men, but from a proper source,--since his father had not conceived it to be his duty to give them to him early in his life. If Kenyon had not opened out a new and awful vista of thought the night that he talked about Graham and Ita Strabosck, Peter's ignorance, so jealously and mistakenly preserved, would have remained so colossal that he would have gone home humiliated, but unworried. As it was, this one thing at any rate--this one most awful thing--had sunk into his mind, making him dangerously less ignorant but without proper knowledge. He arrived home a prey, therefore, to the most hideous fear.

Luckily there were people dining with his father and mother. Belle had gone out of town for several days, suffering from the shock of finding out the truth about Kenyon, and Ethel had returned to school. Peter was able to go up to his own room unnoticed.

Graham, whose loyalty and concern had been good to see, went up with him and threw the suit-case into a corner.

"Gee!" he said, with a touch of emotion that he made no attempt to hide, "but I'm glad you're home, Petey." It was many years since he had called Peter by the name that he had gone by in the nursery. He seemed to have come so close to his big brother during those recent hours.

Peter did a surprising thing. He turned quickly, strode over to Graham, put his arm round his shoulder and kissed his cheek. For just those few moments both men had gone back through the years and were little boys again.

Two things happened to Graham. He blushed to the roots of his hair, and swallowed something that threatened to choke him.

"You said you had something on, didn't you,--supper, or something?" said Peter.

"Yes; but I'll cut it out if you want me to."

"No, don't. Why should you? I feel pretty rotten and I shall turn in right away. Don't bother about me any more, old man."

"I'd rather stay with you."

"Yes, I know you would, old boy, but you push off and have a good time. As a matter of fact, I rather want to--to be alone for a bit. D'you see?"

"All right, then." And to show that he had become a man again and his own master, Graham went off whistling the latest tango.

And by letting his brother go at that moment, Peter did a very unwise thing. He was still weak and ill. His brain, which had not recovered itself from the effects of Kenyon's poisonous mixture, was in no condition to be tortured by solitary thought. He needed to be kept away from self-analysis--to be set to work on the ordinary commonplaces of everyday life. Most of all, his thoughts required to be put to rest by sleep.

Left to himself, Peter sat down, almost in the dark, with his arms folded, his legs stuck out and his chin buried in his chest, and thrashed the tired machinery of his brain into action. All that had happened in the last forty-eight hours coming on top of the suffering that he had undergone through having been separated from Betty and having failed to bring about the new relationship with his father, upon which he had set his heart, gradually became distorted. He began to look at everything through an enormous magnifying glass and to see himself, not as one whose loyal, simple and unsuspicious nature had been taken advantage of by Kenyon, but as a common drunken creature who had had to be lifted into a cab and who had spent two nights in the apartment of a woman of the street. He began to look at himself with so deep a humiliation and disgust that the mere thought of his ever again holding Betty in his arms seemed outrageous. And having by stages, made conceivable by the condition of his health and the strain that had been put upon him by all the things that had happened since his return from England, come up to this morbid and hyperconscientious point in his self-condemnation, he stood up suddenly, obsessed by a new and appalling thought. He said to himself: "I'm not only unworthy of Betty, I'm unclean, and so unfit to live." And having seized at that with the avidity and even triumph that comes with a sudden disorder of the understanding, he began to dramatize his death--to ask himself how to make it most effective. And then his father entered his thoughts. "Ah!" he cried inwardly. "Father--it's _father_ who is responsible--it's _father_ who must be made to pay! I'm his eldest son. He's very proud of me. He shall come into the room to-night in which he spends all his time for the benefit of other men's sons and find the one he neglected lying dead on the floor. That's it! Now I've got it! There's a hideous irony about this that'll sink even into his curious mind. I'd like to be able to see his face when he finds me. There'd be just a little satisfaction in that."

If only Graham could have come back at that moment, or the little mother to put her arms round that poor, big, over-sensitive, uninitiated lad and bring him out of his mental dejection with her love and warmth!

There was a revolver somewhere among his things. He had bought it when he went camping during one of his vacations from Harvard. He hadn't seen it for several years. With feverish haste he instituted a search, going through one drawer after another, flinging his collars and socks and all his personal things aside, talking in a half-whisper to himself, until, with a little cry of glee, he found it with a box of cartridges. And then, with the most scrupulous care he loaded it, slipped it into his pocket and crept out of the room and downstairs. The door of the drawing-room was ajar. He heard laughter and the intermingling of voices, heard some one say "Good-bye." He dodged quickly past, through the library and into the room in which he had last stood with his hand on the shaking shoulders of his father. _He_ would give him something to weep about this time,--yes, by jove, he would! _He_ would make him wake up at last to the fact that his sons were human beings and needed to be treated as such!

He welcomed the fact that away in the distance a storm had broken with the deep artillery of thunder, and that already heavy rain was swishing down on the city. It fitted into his half-maddened mood.

He shut the door. He walked quickly about the room, speculating as to the most effective place to be found outstretched. He had a decision and then, so that there might be no loop-hole for his father, sat down to write a final indictment.

Time fled away. He covered page after page of note paper, pouring out all his soul, making a great appeal for the right treatment of Graham and his sisters, and finally signed his name, having scrawled in his large round writing, "This is my protest."

The storm had come nearer. Outbursts of thunder rolled over the house followed by stabs of lightning.

He then deliberately placed himself on the chosen spot, cocked the trigger and put the cold barrel of the revolver to his temple.

There was a sort of scream.

Peter swung round, with his nerves jangling like a wire struck suddenly with a stick.

There stood his father, unable to form a sentence, his face grey, his eyes distended and his arms thrown out in front of him.

XIX

Peter was angry, like a child disturbed just at the moment when he was planning a surprise.

"Why couldn't you have come in five minutes later?" he cried out, with queer petulance.

The Doctor tottered forward and peered into his son's face. "Why were you going to do that? Tell me, tell me!"

"You'd have found it all there," said Peter, pointing to the pages which he had left on the desk. "Not very nice reading, I can assure you. But if you want me to tell you instead, I will. And then you can see how a man dies, instead of finding him dead. Perhaps this is the best way, after all."

He went to the door and locked it, still holding the revolver. The sight of his father did not stir any pity or sympathy in his heart. On the contrary, it added to the fever that had attacked his brain and acted as an irritant. He went back and stood in front of the grey man. There was an expression of contempt on his altered face. The pattering of heavy rain against the windows seemed to please him. Nature, like himself, seemed to have burst into open protest.

"Sit down," he said.

The Doctor obeyed. The blaze in his son's eyes contradicted his unnatural calmness. He had to deal with temporary madness. He could see that, and he was chilled with a sense of impending danger in which the most poignant solicitude was mixed.

"Now," said Peter, weighing his words with odd deliberation, "you're going to hear something that'll shake you out of your smug self-complacency and your pitiful belief that everything is all right in this house--You're a good man, a better man than the average father. There's nothing in your life that isn't to your credit. Even since you had children you've worked like a dog to give them a better education than you had, and you've gone without things to provide us with money and make things easy. We all know that and we're grateful. We all know that we ought to be proud of you as a doctor--as a man who has made discoveries and added to the scientific knowledge of your profession. Well, we _are_ proud of you. But in the last words that you'll hear me speak I'm going to tell you what you've failed to do and why, in spite of all your kindness and unselfishness, not one of your children respects you or loves you, and why I, your eldest son, have got to put an end to myself because of your neglect."

Dr. Guthrie sprang to his feet. The calculated cruelty of this indictment was more than he could endure. "What does this mean? If you don't respect and love me, the others do. In what way have I neglected you?" He stood up to Peter like a man, whipped into sudden anger.

Peter liked that. It meant that he could hit out and put facts into naked words without feeling that he was ill-treating a weakling. "That's what I'm going to tell you," he said. "But there's lots of time and I'm not going to leave anything out. What makes you think the others respect and love you? Do they ever tell you so? Do they ever tell you anything? Do they ever go out of their way to come in here for a little talk? And if they did come in would you get out of your shell far enough for them to see that you're a human being? Would you meet them half-way in their desire to get something besides your money from you? Have you ever once in your life been sufficiently inspired with a sense of your responsibility as to make you get up and leave your work and come among us to play with our toys and get known? Have you ever once in all the years that we've been growing up been courageous or wise enough to take Graham or me for a walk and tell us _any one_ thing that we ought to know? In what way have you ever neglected us? In the most vital way of all. We could have done without your money and the education that you've been so delighted to give us. We could have done without comfort and servants and good food and easy times. They mean nothing in the sum total of things that count. Most men never have them at the beginning. They make them. What you've never given us is _yourself_. And we _needed_ you. What you've never given us is common sense. You've been a good father in every inessential way, but no father at all in all that goes to make us men. You've lived in a fool's paradise. You've let us find our own way. You've not given us one human talk--one simple fact--one word of warning. You've utterly neglected us because you're a coward and you've hoped and trusted that others might tell us what you've been afraid to say. Afraid,--to your own flesh and blood,--think of it!" The Doctor cried out again. He realized much of the truth of all this. He had confessed himself to be painfully shy to his wife many times and had spent God knew how many anxious hours wondering how he could get to know his boys. But it was too much to stand and be whipped by his son.

"There are thousands of fathers who hold my views and act as I have acted," he said.

"And there are so many thousands of sons who have to pay for those views that you and men like you spend your lives in trying to save them."

The Doctor drew in his breath. "Wh--what d'you mean?" he stammered.

"Ah! that gets you, doesn't it? Now you're beginning to see what I'm driving at, don't you? Put your mind back to the night you found Graham here with me. You saved him from forging your name, and that was good. But what led him up to that? Did you ask yourself? Did you go to Graham and gain his confidence? Did you wonder whether there was a woman behind it all who would never have come into his life if you had dealt by him like a man and a father,--the sort of woman who has made necessary these things round your laboratory and caused you to bend over your experiments for years and years?"

"Good God! What do you mean?"

Peter raised his voice. "Why should your sons be immune? What have _you_ ever done to render them so? Why am I now standing here with this revolver in my hand? Look at me! A few hours ago I had health and everything in the world that makes life worth living, except a father. At this moment, because I've never had a father, I'm so terrified that I should be a criminal if I married the girl I love that I'm going to kill myself."

"Why? What have you done?"

"I've been two nights in the bed of the sort of woman whose work you are trying to undo."

The Doctor staggered, and then rose up in his wrath. "_You_ have? You, _my_ son,--with such a mother--with such home influence! You mean to tell me that you've descended to such depths of immorality that you've gone back on everything that your education has made of you? It's unthinkable--unbelievable. You must be a mere animal to have done such a thing."

What else he would have said in his emotion and horror no one can say.

A cry of pain and rage rang out. The injustice of his father's narrow, inhuman point of view, his inability to show him, even by his impending death, that he must wake up to his duty and stand by Graham and his sisters, sent the blood into Peter's fevered brain.

"My God!" he cried. "You dare to talk like that to me? You dare to kick me in the face after I've told you that I'm ignorant--without listening to my explanation as to how I got into that woman's apartment. All right, then, I'm not going to be the only one to pay. You shall take your share of it. The sins of the children are brought about by the neglect of the fathers, and we'll go and stand together before the Judge to-night for a verdict on that count."

He raised the revolver, aimed it at his father's head, put his finger on the trigger----

There was a blinding flash of lightning. A yellow quivering flame seemed to cut the room in half between the two angry men----

An instant later the Doctor saw Peter standing with both hands over his face. The unfired revolver lay on the table in all its ugliness. And presently, when he had realized what had happened, he went nearer. "God didn't intend that you should do that," he said. And then his voice broke and he went forward to put his arms round Peter's shoulders. "Give me another chance, my dearest boy!" he cried. "Give me another chance!"

But before he could reach his son the great big hurt boy crumpled and fell in a heap at his feet.

XX

For three weeks Peter's bedroom was the one room in the house to which the eyes of all the family were wholly turned. There, in the dark, he lay a victim to an attack of brain fever. Never in a condition of great danger, poor old Peter was ill and the Doctor, who, better than the rest, knew that death has many doors through which life goes out, eyed the specialist who had been called in with pathetic eagerness.

The little mother and Belle were joined at once by Betty, and the three women sat very close together, speaking and even thinking in whispers during the first two days. To the one whose first child he was and the one who waited to be his wife, Peter meant everything good that life had for them, and in their terror that he might be taken away their imaginations ran ahead, as they always do in moments of such poignant anxiety, and they were afraid to look out of the window in case they should see Death, the black camel, kneeling at the gate.

While the shadow seemed to rest on his house, Dr. Guthrie did many things. First of all he went over all the terrible words that Peter had said to him that bad and unforgettable night. With great humbleness and deep emotion he accepted them as the truth. He sat for hours at his desk with his hands over his face and tears leaking through his fingers. Metaphorically he placed his old hard-working, concentrated self in the criminal stand and his new startled, humbled and ashamed self in the Judge's seat and summed up his life as a father. It was very plain that he had failed in his duty to his boys. He had made no great effort to conquer that queer shyness which had affected him from the beginning. He had allowed his children to grow up to regard him as Bluebeard. He had thrown upon his wife's slight shoulders all the onus of the responsibility for the human development of their characters, and because she had succeeded while they were young he had, like a coward, neglected to step in and take upon himself his obvious duty when they had grown old enough to need more--much more--than the soft guiding hand of a mother. He had allowed them to make an early start,--the girls, as well as the boys,--without understanding the vital necessity of duty and discipline which he alone could inspire in them, because no man or woman in all the country, in any school or college, gave a single thought to either. He had hidden behind a hundred weak and foolish excuses in order to avoid the so-called difficulties of speaking manfully to these two embryo men. He had permitted them to grow out of boyhood without giving them the benefit of his own uninitiated struggles, or the simple warnings and facts which take the glamour away from temptation and make straight ways easy. He "took chances," and hoped that some one else might by accident give them the facts of sex or that they would find them out themselves, as other young men were obliged to do,--never mind how.

Remorse and regret made Hell for this man in those honest hours,--this good, exemplary, distinguished, self-made man whose name would live by his professional efforts and scientific discoveries and who had succeeded in everything except as a father.

And then he called Graham into his room, and sitting knee to knee with his second son, was brave enough to tell him wherein he now knew that he had failed and asked of him, as he had asked of Peter, for another chance. It was a pathetic and emotional talk that these two had, during which both told the truth, hiding nothing, reserving nothing. The outcome of it was good for them both, as well as for Peter. They went together to see Nellie Pope and heard from her lips, to the Doctor's unspeakable thankfulness, that Peter was in no danger from her. From that time onwards that little, kind, wretched girl became one of the Doctor's patients in the proper hospital, eventually to be placed by him at work which rendered the need for her following her chosen profession unnecessary.

And finally the day came when Peter was able to receive visitors, and a very good day it was. The little mother went in first--she had the right. Peter was sitting in his dressing-gown by the window. To his intense relief he had just passed through the hands of a barber, whom he had asked to make him look a little less like a poet. He turned his head quickly towards the door as his mother went in. His old high spirits had returned. The sun was shining and life looked very good. His imagination made him as well aware of the fact that his mother had been through some of the most anxious hours of her life as though he had seen her sitting in her room below with a drawn white face and her hands clasped together. He got up and went to meet her. He took her in his arms and held her very tight. What they said to each other was far too sacred to put into cold print. They spoke in undertone, because the trained nurse kept a jealous eye upon her patient and moved in and out of the dressing-room adjoining. The interview was not allowed to be a long one. The last thing that Peter said to his mother made her very happy. "I think that the Governor and I are pals," he said. "I think we've found each other at last. Isn't that just about the best thing you ever heard?"

In the afternoon Belle was allowed in. To his great relief she told him in her characteristic, concise way, how she felt about Kenyon. He caught her young, she said--marvellously young, "and if he should ever come back to New York all he'll get from me will be two fingers. I've quite recovered. So you may take that line out of your forehead, old boy. One of these days when you're out and about again we'll walk about four times round the reservoir and I'll tell you something of what's been going through my mind while you've been ill. In fact, we'll have a very substantial pow-wow about Nicholas Kenyon, and I don't think we shall leave him quite as immaculate as he usually is by the time we've finished, do you?"

"No," said Peter, "I don't. All the same, I'm grateful to him for one thing. He has brought father out of his shell,--that's about the best thing he ever did in his life."

There was something amusing as well as touching in the way in which the two brothers met again. It was the next morning early. Peter was still in bed, with his hair all frowzled and the remains of sleep still in the corners of his eyes. Graham had ten minutes before he was obliged to leave the house to go downtown.

"Hello, old sport!" said Graham.

"Hello, sonnie! Rather a hot thing in ties, that, eh?"

Graham cleared his throat and put his hand rather self-consciously to the black-and-white effect newly designed by his pet firm of haberdashers. "I think it'll make the senior partner blink all right," he said. "How d'you feel this morning?"

Peter showed his teeth. "I'm sitting up and taking nourishment. Probably before the end of the week you'll see me in shorts and a zephyr sprinting round the park before breakfast."

"I'd like to," said Graham, and he held out his hand.

Peter took it and gave it a scrunch which had in it nothing of the invalid. "Give my love to the subway," he said, "and my kind regards to Wall Street."

Graham grinned, waved his hand and left the room. He found it necessary to blow his nose rather hard on his way down-stairs. "Oh, Gee!" he said to himself. "Oh, Gee! Only think if Peter had--" He didn't allow himself to finish the thought.

And then came Betty, and the way in which she and Peter came together--the way in which they stood only a step or two from the door, inarticulate in their love and thankfulness, was too much even for the trained nurse, to whom love and death and the great hereafter were mere commonplaces. She withdrew to the dressing-room and stayed there for a whole solid quarter-of-an-hour, eliminating herself with a tactfulness for which Peter blessed her and Betty became her friend for all time.

"My baby!" said Peter. "We shall have to begin all over again. We're almost strangers."

But Betty shook her head. "No," she said. "No. There hasn't been one moment during all this time that I haven't been with you."

And Peter nodded. "That's dead true," he said.

And then they sat down very close together and the things they said to each other are lost to the world, because we joined the nurse in the next room and shut the door.

XXI

It happened that the anniversary of Doctor and Mrs. Guthrie's wedding day,--they had been married twenty-eight years,--fell on a Sunday that year.

The night before, at dinner, the little mother, thankful and happy at having Peter back again at the table, asked a favour. In having to ask it, instead of simply saying that she desired her children to go with her to church the next morning, she proved her knowledge of the fact that she had joined the ranks of mothers whose children have outgrown them.

Mrs. Guthrie was, however, one of those rather rare women who had grown old gracefully. The hand of time, whose natural treatment she had made no sort of endeavor to combat, had added to her beauty. Optimism, a steady faith in God and His goodness, and the usual gift of accepting whatever came to her without kicking against the pricks, had mellowed her. It was without any of the spirit of martyrdom that cakes the nature of those women who have not been able to acquire the best sort of philosophy that she frankly made this very natural and easily fulfilled desire a favour. Peter was well again and she wanted to kneel before the altar of the Great Father and give thanks, surrounded by her children, on the anniversary of the day that made her a wife.

The family had grown out of the habit of going to church,--Belle was tired, as a rule, after a late Saturday night, Graham was an inveterate week-ender, Ethel was a modernist, and Peter played golf,--and so, when they all agreed without any argument the little mother was almost as surprised as she was delighted.

The conspiracy of silence which the family had tacitly agreed upon during their recent trouble, in order to spare her from unhappiness, left Mrs. Guthrie wholly without any knowledge of the fact that they were all glad of an excuse to join her in church, because they all felt a curious eagerness to listen to the simple, beautiful service with which they had grown up and to kneel once more--more humbly and sincerely than ever before--in the house of the God who had been instrumental in their various escapes.

It would have been better if Mrs. Guthrie had not been so carefully shielded--if she had been made to share with the Doctor the blame,--at any rate for the mistakes which the two girls had made,--from the fact that she had let go the reins of duty and discipline with which she had held them in their early years and given them their heads--if she had been strong enough and wise enough to maintain over Belle and Ethel, without autocratically putting a stop to their having "a good time," the authority of respect, won by love and the exercise of sympathy and common sense--if, in short, she had not been content to slip into a position that allowed these high-spirited girls to say to themselves quite so early in their lives, "Oh, poor, dear little mother doesn't understand. She doesn't know anything that modern girls have to go through." She was shielded because it was understood that she was a sort of sleeping partner--not an active member of the firm. She was regarded as being so sweet and soft and old-fashioned that she couldn't possibly appreciate the conditions of the times in which the girls lived. Their early positions had become reversed. It was the girls who mothered their mother.

It was a strangely silent party that returned home that Sunday morning, headed by the Doctor and the little mother. Betty had been invited by Mrs. Guthrie to join them and was to stay to lunch. It was while they were in the hall, and just as Betty had gone upstairs with Mrs. Guthrie, that the Doctor turned quickly. "I want you all to come to my room," he said. "I won't keep you more than a few moments," and led the way.

Wondering what was going to happen, but taking trouble to avoid catching each other's eyes, Peter, Graham, Belle and Ethel followed their father across the library into the room which, for the two boys, had associations that they were never likely to forget, and for the two girls had hitherto been a place to avoid.

As soon as they were in the room the Doctor shut the door and, from force of habit, went over to his desk. With one thin hand on it, and with a shaft of winter sun on a face that was very lined and pale he stood there for a moment in silence. His lips trembled a little, but there was a look in his eyes behind those strong glasses that his children had never seen before.

"Peter, Graham, Belle and my little Ethel," he said brokenly, "I'm going to ask you all, on a day that means a great deal to your mother and to me, and so to you, to forgive me for not having been all that I ought to have been to you I know that I've failed in my duty as a father. You have always been my most precious possessions and it is for you that I've worked so hard and so closely, but because of all that I went through as a child and because I never struggled as I ought to have done to overcome a foolish shyness that has made me self-conscious, you and I have never been friends--have never understood each other. I take all the blame for whatever you have done that has made you suffer and of which you are ashamed. Very humbly, I stand before you now and ask you, as I asked Peter, here, in this room, to give me another chance. Let's make a new beginning from to-day, with the knowledge that I love you better than anything in the world. I want you all to meet me half-way in future, to look upon me no longer as the shy, unsympathetic, unapproachable man who, by accident, is your father, but as your closest and most intimate friend whose best and dearest wish is to help you and listen to your worries and give you all the advice in his power. I want this room to be the place to which you'll always come with the certain knowledge that you'll be welcomed by me with the greatest eagerness and delight. Don't let there be anything from to-day onwards that you can't tell me. Promise me that. I--I've told myself two or three times that it's too late for me to be of any use to you--that having failed I could never repair my mistake or ever hope to win your confidence and friendship."

His voice broke so badly that he was unable to speak, and the painfulness of this strange little scene was almost more than those young people could bear. It hurt them enough to stand facing a man who opened his soul for them to gaze into, especially when that man was their father. It was dreadful to see him blinded by tears in the middle of an appeal which they all realized called for such extreme courage and strength of character to make.

They all wanted to do something to help him and force him out of a humbleness that made them horribly self-conscious. It was Peter who did it. With two strides he stood at the Doctor's side and put his arms round his shoulder.

The Doctor looked up into the face of the great big, tender fellow, whose eyes were eloquent, and smiled. Then he found his voice again and forced himself to the bitter end of what he had determined to say. "Something in the way you've all treated me since Peter has been ill," he said, "has given me hope. That's why I put myself in your hands, my dears. Shall we make a new beginning? Will you take me into your friendship? Will you all give me another chance?"

With a little cry from her heart Belle went forward and put her arms round her father's neck, and Ethel, with hot tears running down her face, crept up to him and put one of his hands to her lips. Graham bent over the other, which he held tight, and Peter, who had longed for this moment through all his illness, didn't give a curse who heard his voice break, patted the Doctor on the back, and said: "Dear old man, my dear old father!" over and over again.

THE END

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Sins of the Children, by Cosmo Hamilton