he staggered a great distance--oh, nearly two yards!--and caught hold of
my hand, and laughed and turned back--to you. You didn't run away from
him then, Patricia. Are you going to do it now?"

She struggled under his look. She had an absurd desire to cry, just that
he might console her. She knew he would. Why was it so hard to remember
that she hated Rudolph! Of course, she hated him; she loved that other
man yonder. His name was Jack. She turned toward Charteris, and the
reassuring smile with which he greeted her, impressed Patricia as being
singularly nasty. She hated both of them; she wanted--in that brief time
which remained for having anything--only her boy, her soft, warm little
Roger who had eyes like Rudolph's.

"I--I--it's too late, Rudolph," she stammered, parrot-like. "If you had
only taken better care of me, Rudolph! If--No, it's too late, I tell
you! You will be kind to Roger. I am only weak and frivolous and
heartlesss. I am not fit to be his mother. I'm not fit, Rudolph!
Rudolph, I tell you I'm not fit! Ah, let me go, my dear!--in mercy, let
me go! For I haven't loved the boy as I ought to, and I am afraid to
look you in the face, and you won't let me take my eyes away--you won't
let me! Ah, Rudolph, let me go!"

"Not fit?" His voice thrilled with strength, and pulsed with tender
cadences. "Ah, Patricia, I am not fit to be his father! But, between
us--between us, mightn't we do much for him? Come back to us,
Patricia--to me and the boy! We need you, my dear. Ah, I am only a
stolid, unattractive fogy, I know; but you loved me once, and--I am the
father of your child. My standards are out-of-date, perhaps, and in any
event they are not your standards, and that difference has broken many
ties between us; but I am the father of your child. You must--you _must_
come back to me and the boy!" Musgrave caught her face between his
hands, and lifted it toward his. "Patricia, don't make any mistake!
There is nothing you care for so much as that boy. You can't give him
up! If you had to walk over red-hot ploughshares to come to him, you
would do it; if you could win him a moment's happiness by a lifetime of
poverty and misery and degradation, you would do it. And so would I,
little wife. That is the tie which still unites us; that is the tie
which is too strong ever to break. Come back to us, Patricia--to me and
the boy."

"I--Jack, Jack, take me away!" she wailed helplessly.

Charteris came forward with a smi