is any germ of love
for you in her, it will grow of itself. You cannot force it into blossom.
Come, Jack, am I not right?"

Jack's hands lay cold and limp in his father's; so limp that it seemed
only a case of leading, now. Yet there was always the uncertain in the
boy; the uncertain hovering under that face of ashes that the father was
so keenly watching; a face so clearly revealing the throes of a struggle
that sent cold little shivers into his father's warm grasp. Jack's eyes
were looking into the distance through a mist. He dropped the lids as if
he wanted darkness in which to think. When he raised them it was to look
in his father's eyes firmly. There was a half sob, as if this
sentimentalist, this Senor Don't Care, had wrung determination from a
precipice edge, even as Mary Ewold had. He gripped his father's hands
strongly and lifted them on a level with his breast.

"You have been very fine, father! I want you to be patient and go on
helping me. The trail is a rough one, but straight, now. I--I'm too
brimming full to talk!" And blindly he left the library.

When the door closed, John Wingfield, Sr. seized the telegram, rolled it
up with a glad, fierce energy and threw it into the waste-basket. His
head went up; his eyes became points of sharp flame; his lips parted in a
smile of relief and triumph and came together in a straight line before
he sank down in his chair in a collapse of exhaustion. After a while he
had the decanter brought in; he gulped a glass of brandy, lighted another
cigar, and, swinging around, fell back at ease, his mind a blank except
for one glowing thought:

"He will not go! He will give up the girl! He is to be all mine!"

It is said that the best actors never go on the stage. They play real
parts in private life, making their own lines as they watch the other
players. One of this company, surveying the glint of his bookcases, was
satisfied with the greatest effort of his life in his library.

XXXIII

PRATHER SEES THE PORTRAIT

It did not occur to Jack to question a word of the narrative that had
reduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swift
processes of reason and the promptness of decision of which he was
capable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as he
ascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal had
struck to the bed-rock of his affection and his conscience, revealing
duty not as a thing that you s