When Tredennis rose to take his leave, the professor rose also.

"I will go with you," he said. "And if you will, you shall give me a few minutes of your time before going home. I have some new books to show you."

They went out together; but, until they reached the other house and entered the library, very little was said. The catastrophe of the broken teacup, or something of greater moment, seemed to occupy the professor\'s thoughts. By the time they took their accustomed chairs he appeared to have forgotten the new books. His thoughtful face wore so sadly perplexed a look that he even seemed older than usual.

Tredennis awaited his first words in silence. His quiet fondness for him had become a very warm and tender feeling during the past months. It had been his pleasure to try to be of use to him. He had studied his needs, and endeavored to supply them; he had managed to share hours with him which might otherwise have been lonely; he had brought to him the stir of the outside working world when he seemed to require its stimulant; he had placed his own vigor and endurance at his disposal without seeming to do so, and his efforts at making his rather lonely life a brighter and more attractive thing had not been in vain. It was to him the professor turned in his moments of fatigue and necessity, and it was to him he turned now.

"I am going to do a curious thing," he said.—"I am going to do a curious thing; but I think it is the best thing and the simplest."

"The simplest thing is always the best," said [Pg 81]Tredennis, more because there was a pause than because he felt an answer was needed.

"Yes, yes," said the professor, seriously. "I think so. And it is easier to be simple with you, my boy, than with another man. It is your way to be direct and serious. You always had the habit. It never was your way to trifle. It is rather the fashion to trifle nowadays, you know, but you,—I have always liked it in you that you were not a trifler."

"No," answered Tredennis; "I have not trifled much. It may have been against me. Sometimes I have thought it was. I cannot count it among my merits, at any rate. I am a grim fellow by nature."

"No," said the professor. "Not a grim fellow. A silent fellow, and rather unyielding with yourself, but"—

He stopped, and looked up at him with a simple affection which made the young man\'s heart beat as a woman\'s glance might have done.

"I think you know I love you," he said. "I have begun to depend on you and count you among my luxuries. I am an old man, and my luxuries are worth a great deal to me. No kindly, thoughtful act of yours has been unregarded, and I have liked your fancy for me almost as a girl likes the attentions of her first lover. Sometimes it has pleased me to be half sentimental over them, and half sentimental over you."

Tredennis flushed with pleasure and warm feeling. He rose impulsively and crossed the hearth.

"I never say things well," he said, "but I should like to try to put into words something of what I feel. You once said you wished I was your son, and I have been glad to remember it. I have no ties. Let your wish be a sort of tie between us. It is a tie I should be proud of, and glad to honor and make an object in my life. Give me what affection you can. I wish for it and need it. If I had been your son you would have counted on me; give me the pleasure and comfort of knowing you[Pg 82] count on me now. It has somehow seemed my lot to have no place in the lives of others. Give me this, if I am worth it. I shall be better for it, and happier."

The professor gave him a quiet, half-wistful glance.

"I gave it to you long ago," he said, at length. "The wish has been a tie between us from the first."

And he said it even with a touch of solemnity.

"If it had not been," he added, afterward, "I should not have come to you with my trouble to-night,—feeling so sure that you would understand it."

He made a gesture with his hand.

"Go and walk up and down the room there, as I am used to seeing you," he said. "And I will tell you about it."

Tredennis did as he bade him,—went to the other side of the room and began his measured march.

"We talked of Bertha in this very room years ago," he began. "It seems to be our lot to talk of Bertha. I am going to speak of her again."

Tredennis continued his measured tramp without speaking.

The professor rested his forehead upon his hand and sat so, looking downward. He went on in a quiet voice, and with a quiet, absorbed manner,—the manner of a man who, having the habit of close and careful study, was giving his whole attention simply and carefully to his subject.

"I shall have to go back to that night and repeat something I said then," he went on. "It was that her only hope for happiness would lie in her marriage with a man she loved deeply."

"I remember it," Tredennis answered.

"And I added that the chances were that, instead, she would marry the man who loved her."

"I remember that too."

The professor sighed heavily and wearily.

"The chances were too many," he said. "She married the man who loved her."

[Pg 83]

Tredennis had marched one length of the room before he continued:—

"He did love her," the professor said, after his pause, "tempestuously—overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly is a good word to use. He overwhelmed her in the end. At first she liked him; but when the nature of his feeling for her began to express itself, it is my impression that she felt a secret fear of and dislike to it. She tried to avoid him, but he absolutely refused to allow it. He followed her, and was picturesquely wretched before her eyes. There is no denying he was picturesque. That was his strong point. He was picturesque and pathetic—and poetic. She was only a girl, and she was tremendously at a disadvantage before him. When she treated him badly he bore it with tender patience, and he devoted himself to her with a faithfulness which might have touched a heart harder and more experienced than hers was, poor child! Of course his picturesque unhappiness and his poetic magnanimity told; I knew they would, and they did. Reaction set in, and she began to feel the fascination of making him happy."

He stopped, and suddenly lifted his head.

"My boy," he said, "one of the most damnable things in life is a fascination like that in the mind of a generous, ignorant creature!"

He dropped his head again.

"That is strong language," he said, "and I don\'t often use strong language. I—don\'t consider it gentlemanly, but I felt strongly at the moment, and the word is expressive. Well, the time came when, in a moment when her mood being softer and more sympathetic than usual, and she herself, as a consequence, at a greater disadvantage than ever,—she committed herself; and then it was all over. The trouble is, that the experience of a woman of forty is what a girl needs when she chooses her husband at twenty, and, as the two things are incompatible, the chances are always against her. Bertha had the faults and follies that I told you go to make a[Pg 84] martyr. When she had made her mistake, she was strong and weak enough to abide by it. It is mostly imagination in matters of this kind; it was imagination in hers. She was young enough to believe in everything. She believed that if she broke her engagement she would break Amory\'s heart and ruin his life for him. There was no danger of either catastrophe, but they were realities to her, and they terrified her. Then she had never been touched by any deeper feeling than the anxious tenderness he awakened in her. She had not been given to sentiments, and, I am afraid, had regarded them rather contemptuously in others. She had no conception of a feeling stronger than herself, and held curiously obstinate and lofty views of the conduct of women who did not hold their emotions neatly in check. Her girlish bigotry was touching to me sometimes, because it was so thorough, and revealed such ignorance. I wish—I wish I could hear something of it now!"

Tredennis had reached the end of the room. He turned sharply, but recovered himself and said nothing.

"Lately," the professor added slowly, "she has been more silent on such subjects than she used to be."

He lifted his head from his hand and looked at Tredennis again.

"Philip," he said, "I—I wish to heaven chance had sent you to us that year."

Tredennis stopped in his walk, a dark and rigid figure in the shadow.

"Had sent me?" he said, in a strained voice. "Me! What—could I have done?"

"I—I don\'t know," answered the professor; "but I solemnly believe, my boy, that if you had come, you would have averted an evil."

"Then," said Tredennis, "I wish to God I had!"

"I say it," said the professor, "with all the more certainty, remembering, as I do, one day when she wished for you herself."

"She!" said Tredennis. "Bertha? Bertha?"

[Pg 85]

"Yes, Bertha herself. It was a few weeks before her marriage, and she had not been exactly herself for a week or more. One evening I came into the parlor and found the room full of the odor of flowers. Amory had been with her and had left her a bouquet of heliotrope. She had some on her knee as she sat on a low seat before the fire. When I seated myself near her, she looked up at me suddenly and said, in a rather unsteady voice, \'Papa, I have been thinking about Philip Tredennis. I have not thought of him for a long time. I should like to see him. I—wish he could come back.\' She half laughed at herself as she said it, but her laugh was nervous, and when I said to her, \'Why? Were you great friends? I did not know that,\' she tried to laugh again, and answered, \'Yes—no—not exactly. But it seems to me that he was a strong sort of person, and sensible, and—and you might rely on his decisions. It is only a fancy, I suppose—but it just came into my mind that I should like to see him again.\' There is no doubt, in my mind, that she felt a need of your obstinate strength, which she did not comprehend wholly herself. I wish you had come—I wish from my soul you had!"

"I might have come if I had known," said Tredennis, in a low tone. "There was nothing—nothing to have stood in my way." And he turned and began his walk again.

The professor sighed, as he had sighed before—heavily and drearily.

"But you did not," he said. "And she married Amory."

"I should like to know," asked Tredennis, "if you think she is unhappy now. Do not tell me if you do not wish."

The professor\'s reply was very simple and direct.

"She has never been given to taking sentimental views of herself," he said, "and she is self-controlled and fond of her children, but she has never been happy for[Pg 86] an hour since her marri............