d give."

"But she could have given it once. I know it. I knew it then, but I
wouldn't tell you because I wanted to keep you for myself. He--your
friend David--had not come then. You must take the risk for her sake.
And before it is too late."

"But I can't inflict myself on her. It would be no kindness to her or
to me." He left her and began to pace back and forth agitatedly, in
the pompous, hopping little strut. "You are wrong--you must be wrong.
It is impossible. It would be terrible, tragic even though they are
both good. And it would be my fault. I brought them together,
thinking she would help make things cheerful for him. . . . Mother, I
wish you hadn't put this in my mind! I can't believe it. I won't
believe it. He is honorable--"

The blind woman smiled sadly. "It is a thing with which honor or duty
or law has nothing to do. And I fear--I fear it is already too
late--because I kept silent when I should have opened your eyes."

But Jonathan was not listening. He was seeing the faces of his friends
as they had been that evening. The scales were falling from his eyes,
an evil black fear entering into his heart.

"Oh, Jonathan, my son--my dear son--"

She held out her hands to him and he went to her and knelt at her side.
And she mothered him, that dinky, absurd little man, and he bowed his
head on her knee.

CHAPTER IX

A NEW HOUSE

Radbourne & Company was in a daze. And no wonder! For a week the
"little boss" had not once beamed, the spirited hop had gone out of his
walk, a new querulous note had come into his voice. When a matter went
wrong--which, it seemed, happened oftener than usual--he reminded the
delinquent of the fact, not gently, but sadly, as though deeply aweary
of the frailty of men. Miss Brown confided to Esther that she was well
on the way to "nervous prostration." Esther was worried, and wondered
what grave mischance could have worked out such a change in Jonathan.
He seemed to avoid both her and David, and when they did meet his
manner was constrained and awkward.

It was like chicken-pox and evil gossip and other contagious diseases.
It spread. Gloom hung like a fog over office and shop. No one
whistled or hummed at work. Good friends lost their heads and
exchanged cutting words. And Hegner, the shop foreman, who had been
sober for a year, lost his grip and got drunk. Because he was ashamed
and hated himself, his temper was always at half-cock.

A