ing when she returned to the house in
Versailles to find a visitor there; and now he realized the fulness of
her relief when the frail boy said that he did not like his father. Her
travels had spoken the restlessness of flight in search of oblivion to
the very fact of his paternity. The "I give! I give!" of the portrait was
the giving of the infinity of her fine, sensitive being to him to make
him all hers. His feeling which had held him on the desert when he should
have gone home, that feeling of literal revulsion toward his inheritance,
was a thing born in him which had grown under her caresses and her
training. She had been living solely for him to that last moment when the
book dropped out of her hand; and the incarnation of that which had
killed her was riding beside him now in the flesh. He felt a weaving of
his muscles, a tightening of his nerves, as if waiting on the spark of
will, and all the strength that he had built in the name of the store was
madly tempted. But no! John Prather was not to blame, any more than
himself. He would listen to John Prather, as justice listens to evidence,
and endure his stare to the end.

"Yes, your mother knew," continued Prather. "My mother made a point of
having her know. That was part of my mother's own bitterness. That was
her teaching to me from the first. She had no illusions. She knew the
advantages and the disadvantages of her position. She was and is one of
the few persons in the world of whom my father is a little afraid."

"Then she still lives?" asked Jack sharply.

"Yes, she is in California," Prather returned. "She often referred to the
mole on my cheek as the symbol of my handicap in the world of convention.
'But for the mole, Jack, you would have the store,' she often said. It
delighted her that I had my father's face. As I grew older the
resemblance became more marked. I could see that I pleased my father with
my practical ideas of life, which I developed when quite young. He saw to
it that my mother and I lived well and that I went to a good school. From
my books I drew the same lesson as from my peculiar inheritance; the
lesson that my mother was always inculcating. 'A bank account,' she would
repeat, 'will erase even a mole patch on the cheek. It is the supreme
power that will carry you anywhere, Jack. You must make money!'

"When father came to see her he would talk with a candor with which I am
sure he never talked to your mother. He would tell of his suc