l I got far away from home, and, even then, it was difficult.
They thought I wanted it for--for the laboratory," he concluded, almost
in a whisper.

"Yes?" returned Doctor Dexter, with a rising inflection. "I could have
told you that the cat and dog supply was somewhat depleted
hereabouts--through my own experiments."

"Father!" cried Ralph, his face eloquent with reproach.

Laughing, yet secretly ashamed, Anthony Dexter began to speak.
"Surely, Ralph," he said, "you're not so womanish as that. If I'd
known they taught such stuff as that at my old Alma Mater, I'd have
sent you somewhere else. Who's doing it? What old maid have they
added to their faculty?"

"Oh, I know, Father," interrupted Ralph, waiving discussion. "I've
heard all the arguments, but, unfortunately, I have a heart. I don't
know by what right we assume that human life is more precious than
animal life; by what right we torture and murder the fit in order to
prolong the lives of the unfit, even if direct evidence were obtainable
in every case, which it isn't. Anyhow, I can't do it, I never have
done it, and I never will. I recognise your individual right to shape
your life in accordance with the dictates of your own conscience, but,
because I'm your son, I can't help being ashamed. A man capable of
torturing an animal, no matter for what purpose, is also capable of
torturing a fellow human being, for purposes of his own."

Anthony Dexter's face suddenly blanched with anger, then grew livid.
"You--" he began, hotly.

"Don't, Father," interrupted Ralph. "We'll not have any words. We'll
not let a difference of opinion on any subject keep us from being
friends. Perhaps it's because I'm young, as you say, but, all the time
I was at college, I felt that I had something to lean on, some standard
to shape myself to. Mother died so soon after I was born that it is
almost as if I had not had a mother. I haven't even a childish memory
of her, and, perhaps for that reason, you meant more to me than the
other fellows' fathers did to them.

"When I was tempted to any wrongdoing, the thought of you always held
me back. 'Father wouldn't do it,' I said to myself. 'Father always
does the square thing, and I'm his son.' I remembered that our name
means 'right.' So I never did it."

"And I suppose, now," commented Anthony Dexter, with assumed sarcasm,
"your idol has fallen?"

"Not fallen, Father. Don't say that. You have the same right to you