WHEN Dearing had gone blithely down the street, Galt strode up and down the veranda, hot and cold, by turns, with fury and remorse.

“To think that any man could lecture me like that, while I have had to stand and take it like a sneaking coward!” he fumed. “I am not a jot worse than thousands of others who were led astray by passion. I had to do as I did. I couldn’t give up what I had sought so long, and fought for so fiercely. She knew it; she admitted there was nothing else to do. All these years she has not once reproached me, and she has kept her word—the secret is ours. Wynn says she has advanced, that her solitary life has only ripened her beauty of mind and body, and she is the mother of my child—the little fellow I held in my arms the other day, the outcome of a marriage as sacred under high heaven as any ever solemnized at an altar.” He groaned as he remembered how he and Dora used to boast that their superior mental attitude, and the height and glory of their troth, as compared to the dull code of the vulgar herd, had made them a law unto themselves. He had sown the seeds of such logic in the rich soil of her trusting, girlish inexperience. He had led her, as a candle leads a moth, on to the yawning brink of the abyss; he had closed her gentle mouth, even as it uttered words of love and fidelity, and then, by sheer brute force, he had flung her down to darkness and despair. That was the truth he had not fully allowed himself to face in those years of gratified ambition which had followed, and it was the truth that Wynn Dearing, with his maddening manliness, had hurled into his face to-day. And Dearing had argued that the end was not yet—that the earthly struggle wasn’t all there was to man—that to eat, procreate, and live a certain span of years was not the solution of the problem of existence. How utterly absurd! And yet what was his present ailment? It was not of the body, as he had well known when Dearing was speaking of his condition; and since it was not so, what was it? What force known to science had kindled the raging fires within him, made him desire to shim his own kind, and hate the success which, like a hellish will-o’-the-wisp, had once blazed over him. There was nothing to do, of course, but to continue the fight on his own lines, by the light of the reason born in him. Of course, a man could be sad and gloomy over an old love affair if he continued to brood over it—if he continued to allow it to dominate him. Dora had accepted the inevitable, as any sensible woman would have done, and it was left for him to go on his way unmolested—free! General Sylvester wanted him to marry his niece; she was his social equal, and in time would be as well off in point of fortune. She was a beautiful, imposing, gracious woman, and would make a wife any man would be proud of. Yes, his duty to himself was clear, and dreams like young Dearing indulged in would have to be banished for ever and ever. Yes, he would marry Margaret Dearing, and he and she would travel the world over. He was ready to resign the active management of the big enterprise he had created, and he would be free in every sense. Yes, he would be free—just as other men were free.

He had stepped down on the grass of the lawn and strolled round the house. Shouts and peals of childish laughter came from the yard adjoining his on the left, and on the grass, engaged in a joyous game of hide-and-seek, twoscore boys and girls ran merrily about. Galt walked farther down toward the lower boundary of his premises, seeking with his eyes an object he would not have confessed to himself that he desired to see—the child Dearing had mentioned. Now he saw the boy, but he was not within the Dearing grounds; Lionel had crossed over to Galt’s land, and stood shielded from the view of the merrymakers by a hedge of boxwood. Galt saw him peering cautiously over the hedge, now stealthily lowering his head, now eagerly raising it. He was neatly dressed in white, as when his father had first seen him; there was a jaunty grace about the flowing necktie and low, broad collar which could have been accounted for only by the taste of an artistic mother. He held his broad-brimmed straw hat in his hand, and the breeze swept his tresses back from his fine brow.

Why he did it Galt could not have explained, especially on top of the resolutions just formed, but he went down to him. Lionel’s face was averted, and he was not aware of his father’s approach till his attention was attracted by Galt’s step on the grass. Then he started, flushed, and with alarm written in his face he made a movement as if to run away.

“Surely you are not afraid of me?” Galt said, reassuringly, and in a tone which, for its unwonted gentleness, was a surprise to himself.

“I have no right to be on your land,” the boy faltered, his great, startled eyes downcast. “Doctor Wynn said I must never leave his place. But there wasn’t any fence, and I—I saw the children playing over there, and I wanted to get a little closer.”

“Well, you needn’t be afraid; you have done no wrong,” Galt heard himself saying, as undefined pangs and twinges shot through him. “You may come here whenever you wish.”

“Oh, may I? Thank you. You are very good, and I thought you’d be angry.”

“Angry? How absurd! What in the world could cause you to think I could be angry with a harmless little chap like you?”

“I don’t know; but I did. I was sure at first that you liked me. You know the day I almost went to sleep in your lap, when the pretty lady and the old gentleman were at the tea-table? Well, I did think you liked me then, at first, you know, but when the doctor came and said it was late for children to be out, you put me down quick, and got red in the face, and never looked at me again.”

There was a rustic bench near by, and Galt sat down on it. He found himself unable to formulate a satisfactory reply, and he was going to let the remark pass unnoticed, but Lionel came forward now more confidently, and sat on the end of the bench. A thrill akin to that which he had felt when he discovered the identity of the child passed over Galt. There was an indescribable something in the boy’s great eyes so like his mother’s, in the artistic slenderness of his hands, in his exquisite profile, that dug deep into the soul of the man who sat there self-convicted of the crime of wilful desertion.

“Yes, I’m sure something was wrong that day,” Lionel said, tentatively. “I can always ‘tell when mamma is angry at me, and I knew you were, for you didn’t say good-bye. The others didn’t, either, but I didn’t care for them. I like Doctor Wynn, and I like you, but that is all, except Granny and my mother.”

“You like me, and why?” Galt questioned, almost under his breath.

“Oh, I don’t know, but I do. I did when I first saw you looking up at me in that tree, and then when you held me in your lap. I wanted to go to sleep there, it felt so good—your arms are so fine and strong. Doctor Wynn says your father was a great soldier, and that you have his sword and a picture of him. Oh, I should love to see them! I’d like to be a soldier. Some day, if I am a good boy, will you let me see the sword?”

“Why, yes, you may come—now, if you wish.”

“You are joking, aren’t you?” Lionel asked, in surprise.

“No, I’m in earnest. Come on!”

“Really, do you mean it?”

“Why, of course. Come on!”

They started toward the house side by side. Suddenly Lionel remarked, timidly, “You haven’t said you like me yet, but I suppose you do, or you wouldn’t let me go with you in your house.”

“Yes, I like you—of course I do,” Galt answered, lamely and abashed.

“Very, very much, or just a little—which is it?”

“As much as any boy I ever met; there, will that do you, little man?”

“Have you met many? That’s the question,” the boy laughed out, impulsively, and then his face settled into gravity as he eagerly waited.

“Yes, a great many,” Galt answered, as he wondered over the child’s peculiar persistency. Dearing had said he was supersensitive. Could the trait be an unremovable birth-mark of the mother’s unhappiness when overwhelmed with the sense of utter desertion? If so, then there was physical proof of the Biblical statement that the sins of fathers were visited on their children. Galt shuddered and avoided the appealing face upturned to his. Again he heard the musical voice, so like an echo out of the dreamy, accusing past, rising to him.

“If you did like me, it looks like you would take my hand. I wish you would.”

“There!” Galt forced a laugh as he took the soft, pulsating little fingers into his. As flesh touched flesh a thrill as of new life throbbed and bounded through him, and again he had the yearning to clasp his son to his breast as a woman would have done. As it was, no lover could have felt the touch of the hand of his mistress with keener, more awed delight. At one time, in a talk with Bearing, Galt had argued that even parental love was merely a physical function, like hunger for food, but that had been before this perplexing awakening. They had reached the front steps of the great house. An impulse he could not have analyzed led Galt to think of lifting the boy from the ground to the floor of the veranda, and he held out his arms. The child Sprang into them; his little arm went round the man’s neck, and thus the steps were ascended. Was it a lingering pressure of affection in Lionel’s arm that kept Galt from lowering him to the carpet when they had entered the great hall? He was sure he would put him down as they entered the library, but again he refrained, for the magnitude and splendor of the room had actually startled the child.

“Oh!” Lionel exclaimed, his eyes first on the great crystal chandelier, then on the gilt-framed pier-glass reaching from the floor to the ceiling.

“Why, what is the matter?” Galt asked, holding him tighter.

“I did not know it was so beautiful, so grand!” Lionel cried. “This room alone is as large as our whole house. Ah! is that the sword your father killed men with? And will you please let me see it? Could I hold it, just once?”

“I am afraid it is too heavy for you,” Galt said, as he reached for the heavy sabre in its carved brass scabbard and took it down from a hook under his father’s portrait. “It wasn’t made for little hands like yours. You’d have to grow a lot before you could use it.”

Lionel stood down on the floor as the sword was put into his hands. He made a valiant effort to flourish the unwieldy blade as he thrust and lunged at an imaginary enemy. “Boom! Boom!” he cried, his eyes flashing, “Boom! t-r-r-r boom!”

“Oh, you’ve killed them—they are as dead as doornails!” Galt laughed, impulsively. “Now your men will have a pretty time picking all those corpses up in an ambulance.”

“Is that your father?” the boy leaned on the sabre to ask, as he looked up at the portrait of the elder Galt.

“Yes. Does he look like me?” Galt answered.

“A little bit, maybe”—the child had his wise-looking head tilted to one side as he had seen his mother stand in criticising one of her pictures—“but I don’t like it much. It is full of cracks, and so—dauby.”

“‘Dauby’? Where in the world coul............