feited his right to her
friendship--no sophistry could blind him to that. Moreover the ocean of
degradation not only lay behind him; it lay in front as well. It was as
he had told Barclay. He stood upon an island, not the mainland, of
redemption, and another plunge was inevitable.

What he expected to gain by a word with Natalie Rathbawne, Cavendish
himself could hardly have told. At most, he was conscious of a faint
hope that in some turn or twist of the conversation he might have a
chance of thanking her, of telling her that he rejoiced in her
happiness, and of bidding her good-by. For paramount in his mind lay the
thought of his approaching downfall, inevitable, utter, and final. He
did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew what was coming. It had come
before.

When Cavendish had sent in his card, a servant showed him through the
library into the conservatory, where Peter Rathbawne was seated in a
deep rattan chair watching his daughter, who stood at his side tossing
bread-crumbs to the gold-fish in the circular central pool. They both
turned at the sound of his footsteps, and Natalie held out her hand.

"So you've come at last!" she said. "I should think it was quite time.
Dad, you remember Mr. Cavendish, don't you?"

"Yes," answered her father. "Oh, yes!"

Rathbawne's voice was without life, his face almost wholly void of
expression. Though he glanced at Cavendish, it was with the blank stare
of a delirious person whose attention is unconsciously caught by an
unusual noise rather than with any evidence of direct interest, and he
took no further part in the conversation, nor even seemed to realize
that his companions were speaking. When he had answered his daughter's
question and looked at Cavendish, he leaned back in his chair, and
wearily closed his eyes.

"He is very much changed since you saw him," said the girl in a lower
tone, turning again to the pool, "and it's all come about in the past
six weeks. The strike has had a most curious, a most pathetic effect
upon him. Even the doctor is at a loss to account for it. I think that
I am, perhaps, the only one who really understands. He has always been
so proud of his mills and of his people, so loyal to them, so like a
father to them, one and all, that to have them turn against him like
this, and, what is worse, get to drinking and rioting, has almost broken
his heart. The doctor says only one thing can save him, and that is to
see the mills going again an