ommon idol, the
boy. When Orth realized how alive they were, he opened each room of his
home to them in turn, that evermore he might have sacred and poignant
memories with all parts of the stately mansion where he must dwell alone
to the end. He selected their bedrooms, and hovered over them--not
through infantile disorders, which were beyond even his
imagination,--but through those painful intervals incident upon the
enterprising spirit of the boy and the devoted obedience of the girl to
fraternal command. He ignored the second Lord Teignmouth; he was himself
their father, and he admired himself extravagantly for the first time;
art had chastened him long since. Oddly enough, the children had no
mother, not even the memory of one.

He wrote the book more slowly than was his wont, and spent delightful
hours pondering upon the chapter of the morrow. He looked forward to the
conclusion with a sort of terror, and made up his mind that when the
inevitable last word was written he should start at once for Homburg.
Incalculable times a day he went to the gallery, for he no longer had
any desire to write the children out of his mind, and his eyes hungered
for them. They were his now. It was with an effort that he sometimes
humorously reminded himself that another man had fathered them, and
that their little skeletons were under the choir of the chapel. Not
even for peace of mind would he have descended into the vaults of the
lords of Chillingsworth and looked upon the marble effigies of his
children. Nevertheless, when in a superhumorous mood, he dwelt upon his
high satisfaction in having been enabled by his great-aunt to purchase
all that was left of them.

For two months he lived in his fool's paradise, and then he knew that
the book must end. He nerved himself to nurse the little girl through
her wasting illness, and when he clasped her hands, his own shook, his
knees trembled. Desolation settled upon the house, and he wished he had
left one corner of it to which he could retreat unhaunted by the child's
presence. He took long tramps, avoiding the river with a sensation next
to panic. It was two days before he got back to his table, and then he
had made up his mind to let the boy live. To kill him off, too, was more
than his augmented stock of human nature could endure. After all, the
lad's death had been purely accidental, wanton. It was just that he
should live--with one of the author's inimitable suggestions of future