e
looked up he saw John Woodbury glance sharply, first toward the French
windows and then at the door of the secret room.

"Was that all, Anthony?"

"Yes, about all."

"I want to be alone."

The habit of automatic obedience made Anthony rise in spite of the
questions which were storming at his lips.

"Good-night, sir."

"Good-night, my boy."

At the door the harsh voice of his father overtook him.

"Before you leave the house again, see me, Anthony."

"Yes, sir."

He closed the door softly, as one deep in thought, and stood for a time
without moving. Because a man had asked him who his mother was, he was
under orders not to leave the house. While he stood, he heard a faint
click of a snapping lock within the library and knew that John Woodbury
had entered the secret room.

In his own bedroom he undressed slowly and afterward stood for a long
time under the shower, rubbing himself down with the care of an athlete,
thumbing the soreness of the wild ride out of the lean, sinewy muscles,
for his was a made strength built up in the gymnasium and used on the
wrestling mat, the cinder path, and the football field. Drying himself
with a rough towel that whipped the pink into his skin, he looked down
over his corded, slender limbs, remembered the thick arms and Herculean
torso of John Woodbury, and wondered.

He sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped in a bathrobe, and pondered.
Stroke by stroke he built the picture of that dead mother, like a
painter who jots down the first sketch of a large composition. John
Woodbury, vast, blond, grey-eyed, had given him few of his physical
traits. But then he had often heard that the son usually resembled the
mother. She must have been dark, slender, a frail wife for such a giant;
but perhaps she had a strength of spirit which made her his mate.

As the picture drew out more clearly in the mind of Anthony, he turned
from the lighted room, threw open a window, and leaned out to breathe
the calm, damp air of night.

It was infinitely cool, infinitely fresh. To his left a row of young
trees darted their slender tops at the sky like shadowy spearheads. The
smell of wet leaves and the wet grass beneath rose up to him. To the
right, for his own room stood in a wing of the mansion, the house
shouldered its way into the gloom, a solemn, grey shadow, netted in a
black tracery of climbing vine. In all the stretch of wall only two
windows were lighted, and those yellow squares, he knew,