tting rich."

"It's our _one_ chance for happiness, father."

He cocked an eyebrow at me. "And I think it is your one sure road to
misery."

"But you'll see me through?"

"Come to me a year from today. Tell me that during that time you have
neither seen Lucy nor communicated with her, but that you still love
each other--_then_ I'll see you _through_."

"My dear father, it's so much better for you to put up the money than
for me to borrow it from one of my friends."

"Only because the friend would expect you to pay him back. How would
you live when his money was gone--keep on borrowing?"

"Why, father, you're acting like a parent in an old-fashioned novel.
Are you threatening to cut me off?"

"My son," said he, "a man who had done well, and who deserved well of
the world came to me and showed me his heart--a heart tormented beyond
endurance with unreturned love, with jealousy, and with despair. He
threw himself upon my mercy. And I said that I would help him, with
whatever power of help I have at command. I don't love that man, my
son. I love you. But I am on his side. All my fighting blood is
aroused when I learn that still another American husband has been
wronged by his wife, and by an idle flirting bachelor. God keep me
firm in what must seem to you like cruelty in one to whom you have
always turned with the utmost frankness and loyalty in your
emergencies. And from whom until this moment you have always received
help."

I was appalled and thunderstruck. After a while I said, "Father, she
sobbed so that I thought she would break a blood vessel. I couldn't
stand it. I had to say I would take her away. If I don't, I think she
will die or kill herself."

My father drew himself up very straight, and looked very handsome and
stern, for a moment. Then his frame relaxed and his eyes twinkled, and
he said, "Die? Kill herself? My grandmother!"

"Oh, father," I cried, "don't! Don't! She is all the world to me.
You talk as if----"

"I talk as if she was an excellent example of the modern American wife
in what the papers call 'society.' And that is precisely what she is.
You know that as well as I do. Just because you love her is no reason
for pretending that she's a saint and a martyr and the victim of a
grand historical passion. She _is_ lovely to look at. She _is_
charming to be with. But that doesn't prevent her from being a bad
little egg."

"Father," I said, as gently as I could,