e that my father was as drunk as a lord on his wedding night--What
did he think of _his_ son? Why should I think of mine?"

He was so evidently talking wildly, desperately, that Sylvia made no
attempt to stop him, divining with an aching pity what lay under his
dreadful words. But when he said again, "It's simply that Judith
doesn't care enough about me to stick by me, now I'm down and out. She
can't bear me in her narrow little good world!" Judith's sister could
keep her silence no more.

"Look here, Arnold, I haven't meant to tell you, but I _can't_
have you thinking that. Listen! You know Judith, how splendid and
self-controlled she is. She went all through the sorrow of Mother's
death without once breaking down, not once. But the night before I
started to come here, in the middle of the night, I heard such a sound
from Judith's room! It frightened me, so I could hardly get my breath!
It was Judith crying, crying terribly, so that she couldn't keep it
back any more. I never knew her to cry before. I didn't dare go into
her room--Mother would--but I didn't dare. And yet I couldn't leave
her there alone in such awful trouble. I stood by the door in the
dark--oh, Arnold, I don't know how long--and heard her--When it began
to be light she was quiet, and I went back to bed; and after a while
I tiptoed in. She had gone to sleep at last. Arnold, there under her
cheek was that old baseball cap of yours ... all wet, all wet with her
tears, Judith's tears."

Before she had finished she was sorry she had spoken. Arnold's face
was suffused with purple. He put his hand up to his collar and
wrenched at it, clenched his fists, and finally, flinging his
riding-crop far from him, hid his face in his hands and burst
into tears. "Isn't it damnable!" he said over and over. "Isn't it
damnable!"

Sylvia had nothing more to say. It seemed indeed damnable to her. She
wondered again at Judith's invincible force of will. That alone was
the obstacle--no, it was something back of Judith's will, something
which even Arnold recognized; for now, to her astonishment, he looked
up, his face smeared like a weeping child's, and said in a low tone,
"You know, of course, that Judith's right."

The testimony was wrung out of him. But it came. The moment was one
never to be forgotten.

Out of her passionate pity was born strength that was not to be
denied. She took his hand in hers, his dry, sick man's hand. "Arnold,
you asked me to give you a rea