promptly and for all time, between his family and Nan
Brent--between respectability, honor, wealth, and approbation on one
hand, and pity, contempt, censure, and poverty on the other.
Confronting this _impasse_, he was too racked with torment to face his
people that night and run the gantlet of his mother's sad, reproachful
glances, his father's silence, so eloquent of mental distress, and the
studied scorn, amazement, and contempt in the very attitudes of his
selfish and convention-bound sisters. So he ate his dinner at the
hotel in Port Agnew, and after dinner his bruised heart took command
of his feet and marched him to the Sawdust Pile.

The nurse he had sent down from the Tyee Lumber Company's hospital to
keep Nan company until after the funeral had returned to the hospital,
and Nan, with her boy asleep in her lap, was seated in a low rocker
before the driftwood fire when Donald entered, unannounced save for
his old-time triple tap at the door. At first glance, it was evident
to him that the brave reserve which Nan had maintained at the funeral
had given way to abundant tears when she found herself alone at home,
screened from the gaze of the curious.

He knelt and took both outcasts in his great strong arms, and for a
long time held them in a silence more eloquent than words.

"Well, my dear," she said presently, "aren't you going to tell me all
about it?"

That was the woman of it. She knew.

"I'm terribly unhappy," he replied. "Dad and I had a definite
show-down after the funeral. His order--not request--is that I shall
not call here again."

"Your father is thinking with his head; so he thinks clearly. You,
poor dear, are thinking with your heart controlling your head. Of
course you'll obey your father. You cannot consider doing anything
else."

"I'm not going to give you up," he asserted doggedly.

"Yes; you are going to give me up, dear heart," she replied evenly.
"Because I'm going to give you up, and you're much too fine to make it
hard for me to do that."

"I'll not risk your contempt for my weakness. It _would_ be a
weakness--a contemptible trick--if I should desert you now."

"Your family has a greater claim on you, Donald. You were born to a
certain destiny--to be a leader of men, to develop your little world,
and make of it a happier place for men and women to dwell in. So, dear
love, you're just going to buck up and be spunky and take up your big
life-task and perform it like the gentlema