ir parting; but she
pulled herself together with her usual force and faced the dark future
with a steady eye.

Chapter LI

Monday came and with it his final departure. All that could be done had
been done. Cowperwood said his farewells to his mother and father,
his brothers and sister. He had a rather distant but sensible and
matter-of-fact talk with his wife. He made no special point of saying
good-by to his son or his daughter; when he came in on Thursday, Friday,
Saturday, and Sunday evenings, after he had learned that he was to
depart Monday, it was with the thought of talking to them a little in
an especially affectionate way. He realized that his general moral or
unmoral attitude was perhaps working them a temporary injustice. Still
he was not sure. Most people did fairly well with their lives, whether
coddled or deprived of opportunity. These children would probably do as
well as most children, whatever happened--and then, anyhow, he had no
intention of forsaking them financially, if he could help it. He did
not want to separate his wife from her children, nor them from her. She
should keep them. He wanted them to be comfortable with her. He would
like to see them, wherever they were with her, occasionally. Only
he wanted his own personal freedom, in so far as she and they were
concerned, to go off and set up a new world and a new home with Aileen.
So now on these last days, and particularly this last Sunday night, he
was rather noticeably considerate of his boy and girl, without being too
openly indicative of his approaching separation from them.

"Frank," he said to his notably lackadaisical son on this occasion,
"aren't you going to straighten up and be a big, strong, healthy fellow?
You don't play enough. You ought to get in with a gang of boys and be a
leader. Why don't you fit yourself up a gymnasium somewhere and see how
strong you can get?"

They were in the senior Cowperwood's sitting-room, where they had all
rather consciously gathered on this occasion.

Lillian, second, who was on the other side of the big library table from
her father, paused to survey him and her brother with interest. Both
had been carefully guarded against any real knowledge of their father's
affairs or his present predicament. He was going away on a journey for
about a month or so they understood. Lillian was reading in a Chatterbox
book which had been given her the previous Christmas.

"He won't do anything," she