ertain that no matter what the horror he had run
from, he was more sinned against than sinning. Every line in the boy's
fragile, pathetic figure went straight to the older man's heart. It came
to him, almost joyously, that there had been premonition in his strange
mood of longing for a son. As an end to this nerve-racking night, there
was work to do--for the remainder of it, at least for a brief moment, he
had a companion in his grim, empty house.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed aloud.

"Thank God! Thank God!"

The young man had spoken, and Mr. Montagu, as he heard the words,
remembered that between the sobs there had been, in faint, broken
syllables, "My God! My God!" again and again, and that he had understood
at last what it was to hear that from a man who was neither ruined by
the Stock Exchange nor the weak victim of childish terror. But now, this
repetition of his varied expression startled him. It was like an echo of
himself.

Again he shook himself together. If the boy could speak, it was time to
question him. He had not yet seen his face, beyond a flashing imprint on
his brain of a look of terrific fear and terrific exultation as it had
dashed past him, but he was prepared to like it. He braced himself,
walked over and stood in front of the chair. With an object--even this
object--to justify it, he gladly surrendered himself now to the fatherly
instinct he had so bitterly struggled against, and he felt that he would
like, with his first words, to put his hand reassuringly on the crumpled
shoulder. But the night had left his nerves still raw--in his
sensitivity he could not bear the thought that the trembling figure
would shrink from his touch, and he kept his hand firmly at his side.

"My boy," he said gently, "you mustn't be afraid of me. Tell me what
you've done."

The young man raised his head, sank back in the chair, and looked at
him.

Not once in the long evening of lonely terror, not when he had first
heard himself talking aloud, not when he had dashed at his wife's
portrait, not when he had faced the thought of madness, had Mr. Montagu
had such a shock. An eternally lost soul, a damned thing staring at
paradise, seemed to gaze at him out of the boy's eyes. He thought he was
seeing all the sins of the world in them, yet the look was appallingly
innocent. He seemed to be discovering those sins in the dark, ravening
eyes, but to be feeling them in himself as if the forgotten, ignored
innermost of his o