ow's face grew red:

"She _was_ engaged in--the drama."

"What!"

"She was an actress," he said, realising now the utter absurdity of any
hope from the beginning, yet now committed and determined to see it
through to the bitter end.

"An actress! Louis!" faltered his mother.

There was a silence, cut like a knife by the thin edge of his father's
voice:

"If she _was_ an actress, what is she now?"

"She has helped me with my painting."

"Helped you? How?"

"By--posing."

"Do you desire me to understand that the girl is an artist's model!"

"Yes."

His father stared at him a moment, then:

"And is this the woman you propose to have your mother meet?"

"Father," he said, hopelessly, "there is no use in my saying anything
more. Miss West is a sweet, good, generous young girl, fully my peer in
education, my superior in many things.... You and mother can never
believe that the ideas, standards--even the ideals of civilisation
change--have changed since your youth--are changing every hour. In your
youth the word actress had a dubious significance; to-day it signifies
only what the character of her who wears the title signifies. In your
youth it was immodest, unmaidenly, reprehensible, for a woman to be
anything except timid, easily abashed, ignorant of vital truths, and
submissive to every social convention; to-day women are neither ignorant
nor timid; they are innocent because they choose to be; they are
fearless, intelligent, ambitious, and self-reliant--and lose nothing in
feminine charm by daring to be themselves instead of admitting their
fitness only for the seraglio of some Occidental monogamist--"

"Louis! Your mother is present!"

"Good heavens, father, I know it! Isn't it possible even for a man's own
mother to hear a little truth once in a while--"

His father rose in pallid wrath:

"Be silent!" he said, unsteadily; "the subject is definitely ended."

* * * * *

It was ended. His father gave him a thin, chilly hand at parting. But
his mother met him at the outer door and laid her trembling lips to his
forehead.

"You won't bring this shame on us, Louis, I know. Nor on yourself, nor
on the name you bear.... It is an honourable name in the land, Louis....
I pray God to bless you and counsel you, my son--" She turned away,
adding in a whisper--"and--and comfort you."

And so he went away from Spindrift House through a snow-storm, and
arrived in New York late