ermination to assume a stoic attitude he
felt the biting bitterness and revolt that was gnawing at his soul.

Patsie wanted him to sit down to rest a moment, to have something, if
only a morsel, brought in, but he refused absent-mindedly.

"No, no, I must get it over with. I must know where I stand."

Still he delayed his departure, evidently revolting against the role
which he had determined to play.

"Your mother is home?" he said abruptly.

"She is home--in her room," said Patsie.

He took a final turn before at last making up his mind, then he gave a
short gesture of his hand towards them, saying:

"Wait."

The next moment he went out, not with the old accustomed swinging gait,
but with a lagging step as though already convinced of the futility of
his errand.

"He is doing it for his daughters," thought Bojo; "only that would make
him so humble himself." He felt with a little compunction that he had
judged Drake rather harshly, for in these last interviews it had seemed
to him at times that there had been an absence of that gameness which in
his mind he would like to have associated with the romantic figure of
the manipulator. Now with the secrets of the household laid bare to him
he felt strongly the inner vulnerability of such men. Able outwardly to
defy the great turns of fortune and present a smiling front to
adversity, yet unable to resist the mortal blow which strikes at the
vital regions in their sentiments and their affections. Implacable as he
had been, neither giving nor asking quarter in his struggles with his
own kind, Bojo at length realized the tenderness and pride amounting
almost to a weakness with which he idolized his own. What he had seen
working in the soul of the man in this last half hour made him feel more
than simply the ruin of his worldly possessions. The moment was too
tense for words, the issue too tremendous. They sat side by side, his
hand over hers, staring ahead, waiting.

Ten minutes, half an hour elapsed without a sound. He pictured to
himself to what arguments and entreaties the desperate father must
resort, trying through his inexperience to visualize the drama in one of
these domestic scenes which pass unguessed.

Patsie heard him first. She sprang up with a sharp intaking of her
breath. He rose less precipitately, hearing at last the sound of
returning footsteps. The next moment Drake came into the room and stood
gazing at the two erect figures of the young man and