e was
sharing the secret that had beset him relentlessly and giving his father
the supreme confidence of his heart. Leaning across the table he grasped
his father's hand, which lay still and unresponsive and singularly cold
for a second. Then John Wingfield, Sr. raised his other hand and patted
the back of Jack's hesitantly, as if uncertain how to deal with this
latest situation that had developed out of his son's old life. Finally he
looked up good-temperedly, deprecatingly.

"Well, well, Jack, I almost forgot that you are young. It's quite a bad
case!" he said.

"But what did she mean? Can you guess? I have thought of it so much that
it has meant a thousand wild things!" Jack persisted desperately.

"Come! come!" the father rallied him. "Time, time!"

He gripped the hand that was gripping his and swung it free of the table
with a kindly shake. All the effective charm of his personality which he
never wasted, the charm that could develop out of the mask to gain an end
when the period of listening was over, was in play.

"She excited the opposition of the strength in you," he said. "You ask
what did she mean? It is hard to tell what a woman means, but I judge
that she meant that it was not in her blood to marry a fellow who went
about fighting duels and breaking arms. She would like a more peaceful
sort; and, yes, anything that came into her mind leaped out and you were
mystified by her strange exclamation!"

"Perhaps. I suppose that may be it. It was just myself, just my devil!"
Jack assented limply.

"Time! time! All this will pass."

Jack could not answer that commonplace with one of his own, that it would
not pass; he could only return the pressure when his father, rising and
coming around the table, slipped his arm about the son in a demonstration
of affection which was like opening the gate to a new epoch in their
relations.

"And you would have killed Leddy! You could have broken that Mexican in
two! I should like to have seen that! So would the ancestor!" said the
father, giving Jack a hug.

"Yes, but, father, that was the horror of it!"

"Not the power to do it--no! I mean, Jack, that in this world it is well
to be strong."

"And you think that I am no longer a weakling?" Jack asked strangely;
"that I carried out your instructions when you sent me away?"

"Oh, Jack, you remember my farewell remark? It was made in irritation and
suffering. That hurt me. It hurt my pride and all that my work stand