e stood aghast till Thor strode up and kissed her, saying: "Thank you,
mumphy. She is a noble girl--one of the best."

The example had its effect on Claude, who had stood hesitating in the
doorway, and now came toward his father's chair, though timidly.
"Father, I'm going to be married, too."

His mother uttered a smothered cry. Masterman turned sharply.

"Who? You?"

The implied scorn in the tone put Claude on his mettle. "Yes, father,"
he tried to say with dignity. It was in search of further support for
this dignity that he added, in a manner that he tried to make formal,
but which became only faltering, "To--to--to Miss Rosanna Fay."

Masterman shrugged his shoulders and returned to his newspaper. There
were full three minutes in which each of the spectators waited for
another word. "Have you nothing to say to me, father?" Claude pleaded,
in a tone curiously piteous.

The father barely glanced around over his shoulder. "What do you expect
me to say?--to call you a damn fool? The words would be wasted."

"I'm a grown man, father--" Claude began to protest.

"Are you? It's the first intimation I've had of it. But I'm
willing to take your word. If so, you must assume a grown man's
responsibilities--from now on."

Claude's throat was dry and husky. "What do you mean by--from now on?"

"I mean from the minute when you've irrevocably chosen between this
woman and us. You haven't irrevocably chosen as yet. You've still
time--to reconsider."

"But if I don't reconsider, father?--if I can't?"

"The choice is between her and--us."

He returned to his paper; but again his wife's nascent will to live
asserted itself, to no one's astonishment more than to her own. "It's
not between her and me, Claude," she cried, casting as she did so a
frightened glance at the back of her husband's head. "I'm your mother. I
shall stand by you, whoever fails." Her words terrified her so utterly
that before she dared to cross the floor to her son she looked again
beseechingly at the iron-gray top of her husband's head as it appeared
above the back of the arm-chair. Nevertheless, she stole swiftly to her
boy and put her hands on his shoulders. "I'm your mother, dear," she
sobbed, tremblingly; "and if she's a good girl, and loves you,
I'll--I'll accept her."

Masterman turned his newspaper inside out, as though pretending not to
hear.

Thor waited till Claude and his mother, clinging to each other, had
crept out of the room, befo