Norton sat in the library for more than an hour trying to nerve himself for the interview while waiting for Helen. He had lighted and smoked two cigars in rapid succession and grown restless at her delay. He rose, strolled through the house and seeing nothing of either Tom or Helen, returned to the library and began pacing the floor with measured tread.

He had made up his mind to do a cruel thing and told himself over and over again that cruel things are often best. The cruelty of surgery is the highest form of pity, pity expressed in terms of the highest intelligence.

He was sure the boy had not made love to the girl. Helen was no doubt equally innocent in her attitude toward him.

It would only be necessary to tell her a part of the bitter truth and her desire to leave would be a resistless one.

And yet, the longer he delayed and the longer he faced such an act, the more pitiless it seemed and the harder its execution became. At heart a deep tenderness was the big trait of his character.

Above all, he dreaded the first interview with Helen. The idea of the responsibility of fatherhood had always been a solemn one. His love for Tom was of the very[Pg 308] beat of his heart. The day he first looked into his face was the most wonderful in all the calendar of life.

He had simply refused to let this girl come into his heart. He had closed the door with a firm will. He had only seen her once when a little tot of two and he was laboring under such deep excitement and such abject fear lest a suspicion of the truth, or any part of the truth, reach the sisters to whom he was intrusting the child, that her personality had made no impression on him.

He vaguely hoped that she might not be attractive. The idea of a girl of his own had always appealed to him with peculiar tenderness, and, unlike most fathers, he had desired that his first-born should be a girl. If Helen were commonplace and unattractive his task would be comparatively easy. It was a mental impossibility for him as yet to accept the fact that she was his—he had seen so little of her, her birth was so unwelcome, her coming into his life fraught with such tragic consequences.

The vague hope that she might prove weak and uninteresting had not been strengthened by the momentary sight of her face. The flash of joy that lighted her sensitive features, though it came across the lawn, had reached him with a very distinct impression of charm. He dreaded the effect at close range.

However, there was no other way. He had to see her and he had to make her stay impossible. It would be a staggering blow for a girl to be told in the dawn of young womanhood that her birth was shadowed by disgrace. It would be a doubly cruel one to tell her that her blood was mixed with a race of black slaves.[Pg 309]

And yet a life built on a lie was set on shifting sand. It would not endure. It was best to build it squarely on the truth, and the sooner the true foundation was laid the better. There could be no place in our civilization for a woman of culture and refinement with negro blood in her veins. More and more the life of such people must become impossible. That she should remain in the South was unthinkable. That the conditions in the North were at bottom no better he knew from the experience of his stay in New York.

He would tell her the simple, hideous truth, depend on her terror to keep the secret, and send her abroad. It was the only thing to do.

He rose with a start at the sound of Tom\'s voice calling her from the stairway.

The answer came in low tones so charged with the quality of emotion that belongs to a sincere nature that his heart sank at the thought of his task.

She had only said the most commonplace thing—"All right, I\'ll be down in a moment." Yet the tones of her voice were so vibrant with feeling that its force reached him instantly, and he knew that his interview was going to be one of the most painful hours of his life.

And still he was not prepared for the shock her appearance in the shadows of the tall doorway gave. He had formed no conception of the gracious and appealing personality. In spite of the anguish her presence had brought, in spite of preconceived ideas of the inheritance of the vicious nature of her mother, in spite of his ingrained repugnance to the negroid type, in spite of his horror of the ghost of his young manhood suddenly risen from the dead to call him to judgment,[Pg 310] in spite of his determination to be cruel as the surgeon to the last—in spite of all, his heart suddenly went out to her in a wave of sympathy and tenderness!

She was evidently so pitifully embarrassed and the suffering in her large, expressive eyes so keen and genuine, his first impulse was to rush to her side with words of comfort and assurance.

The simple white dress, with tiny pink ribbons drawn through its edges, which she wore accentuated the impression of timidity and suffering.

He was surprised to find not the slightest trace of negroid blood apparent, though he knew that a mixture of the sixteenth degree often left no trace until its sudden reversion to a black child.

Her hair was the deep brown of his own in young manhood, the eyes large and tender in their rich blue depths—the eyes of innocence, intelligence, sincerity. The lips were full and fluted, and the chin marked with an exquisite dimple that gave a childlike wistfulness to a face that without it might have suggested too much strength.

Her neck was slightly curved and set on full, strong shoulders with an unconscious grace. The bust was slight and girlish, the arms and figure rounded and beautiful in their graceful fullness.

Her walk, when she took the first few steps into the room and paused, he saw was the incarnation of rhythmic strength and perfect health.

But her voice was the climax of her appeal—low, vibrant, quivering with feeling and full of a subtle quality that convinced the hearer from the first moment of the truth and purity of its owner.

She smiled with evident embarrassment at his silence.[Pg 311] He was stunned for the moment and simply couldn\'t speak.

"So, I see you at last, Major Norton!" she said as the color slowly stole over her face.

He recovered himself, walked quickly to meet her and extended his hand:

"I must apologize for not seeing you earlier this morning," he said gravely. "I was up all night travelling through the country and slept very late."

As her hand rested in his the girl forgot her restraint and wounded pride at the cold and doubtful reception he had given earlier. Her heart suddenly beat with a desire to win this grave, strong man\'s love and respect.

With a look of girlish tenderness she hastened to say:

"I want to thank you with the deepest gratitude, major, for your kindness in inviting me here this summer——"

"Don\'t mention it, child," he interrupted frowning.

"Oh, if you only knew," she went on hurriedly, "how I love the South, how my soul glows under its skies, how I love its people, their old-fashioned ways, their kindness, their hospitality, their high ideals——"

He lifted his hand and the gesture stopped her in the midst of a sentence. He was evidently struggling with an embarrassment that was painful and had determined to end it.

"The time has come, Helen," he began firmly—"you\'re of age—that I should tell you the important facts about your birth."

"Yes—yes——" the girl answered in an excited[Pg 312] whisper as she sank into a chair and gazed at him fascinated with the terror of his possible revelation.

"I wish I could tell you all," he said, pausing painfully.

"You know—all?"

"Yes, I know."

"My father—my mother—they are living?"

In spite of his effort at self-control Norton was pale and his voice strained. His answers to her pointed questions were given with his face turned from her searching gaze.

"Your mother is living," was the slow reply.

"And my father?"

His eyes were set in a fixed stare waiting for this question, as a prisoner in the dock for the sentence of a judge. His lips gave no answer for the moment and the girl went on eagerly:

"Through all the years that I\'ve been alone, the one desperate yearning of my heart has been to know my father"—the lines of the full lips quivered—"I\'ve always felt somehow that a mother who could give up her babe was hardly worth knowing. And so I\'ve brooded over the idea of a father. I\'ve hoped and dreamed and prayed that he might be living—that I might see and know him, win his love, and in its warmth and j............