wed him three thousand a year and had asked him not to bring his
wife to see her. His father had refused to give him a penny. O-liver's
wild oats and wilfulness cut him off, he ruled, from parental
consideration. "You are not my son," he had said sternly. "If the time
ever comes when you can say you are sorry, I'll see you."

O-liver having married Fluffy Hair had found her also
self-centered--not a lady like his mother, but fundamentally of the same
type. Neither of them had made him feel that he might be more than he
was. They had always shrunk him to their own somewhat small patterns.

Jane's philosophy came to him therefore like a long-withheld stimulant.
"You might be President of the United States."

When Henry or Atwood or Tommy had said it to him he had laughed. When
Jane said it he did not laugh.

VI

And so it came about that one day he rose and went to his father. And he
said: "Dad, will you kill the fatted calf?"

His father lived in a great Tudor house which gave the effect of age but
was not old. It had a minstrels' gallery, a big hall and a little hall,
mullioned windows and all the rest of it. It had been built because of a
whim of his wife's. But O-liver's father in the ten years he had lived
in it had learned to love it. But more than he loved the house he loved
the hills that sloped away from it, the mountains that towered above it,
the sea that lay at the foot of the cliff.

"It is God's country," he would say with long-drawn breath. He had been
born and bred in this golden West. All the passion he might have given
to his alien wife and alien son was lavished on this land which was
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

And now his son had ridden up to him over those low hills at the foot of
the mountain and had said: "Father, I have sinned."

O-liver had not put it scripturally. He had said: "I'm sorry, dad. You
said I needn't come back until I admitted the husks and swine."

There was a light on the fine face of the older man. "Oliver, I never
hoped to hear you say it." His hand dropped lightly on the boy's
shoulders. "My son which was dead is alive again?"

"Yes, dad."

"What brought you to life?"

"A woman."

The hand dropped. "Not--"

"Not my wife. Put your hand back, dad. Another woman."

He sat down beside his father on the terrace. The sea far below them was
sapphire, the cliffs pink with moss--gorgeous color. Orange umbrellas
dotted the distant beach.

"Your mo