really, Mr. Usher, I suppose I couldn't forget she was a woman."

"Woman? Woman? I'd 'a' womaned 'er! Look 'ere, my boy, it's a sad
business, and there's no one sorrier for you than I am, but there's no
good you and me broodin' mournful over what she's done. Course she'd do
it, 's long's you let her. You hadn't ought to 'ave let 'er. And seein'
as how you have, seems to me what you've got to do now is to take her
back again."

"I can't take her back again."

"And why not?"

"Because of the children--for one thing."

That argument had its crushing effect on Mr. Usher. It made him pause a
perceptible moment before he answered.

"Well--you needn't look to me and her mother to 'ave her--"

Randall rose, as much as to say that this was enough; it was too much;
it was the end.

"We've done with her. You took her out of our 'ands what 'ad a hold on
her, and you owe it to her mother and me to take her back."

"If that's all you've got to say, Mr. Usher--"

"It isn't all I've got to say. What I got to say is this. Before you was
married, Randall, I don't mind telling you now, my girl was a bit too
close about you for my fancy. I've never rightly understood how you two
came together."

There, as they fixed him, his little eyes took on their craftiness again
and his mouth a smile, a smile of sensual tolerance and understanding,
as between one man of the world and another.

"I don't know, and I don't want to know. But however it was--I'm not
askin', mind you--however it was"--He was all solemn now--"you made
yourself responsible for that girl. And responsible you will be held."

It may have been that Mr. Usher drew a bow at a venture; it may have
been that he really knew, that he had always known. Anyhow, that last
stroke of his was, in its way, consummate. It made it impossible for
Randall to hit back effectively; impossible for him to say now, if he
had wished to say it, that he had not been warned (for it seemed to
imply that if Mr. Usher's suspicions were correct, Randall had had an
all-sufficient warning); impossible for him to maintain, as against a
father whom he, upon the supposition, had profoundly injured, an
attitude of superior injury. If Mr. Usher had deceived Randall, hadn't
Randall, in the first instance, deceived Mr. Usher? In short, it left
them quits. It closed Randall's mouth, and with it the discussion, and
so that the balance as between them leaned if anything to Mr. Usher's
side.

"Well, I'm