e at the political meeting, his
life's tragedy became a hammer beating every nerve into emotion. He was
like one shipwrecked who strikes out with a swimmer's will to reach his
goal. All at once, on the platform, as he spoke, when his eyes saw the
faces of Carnac and his mother the catastrophe stunned him like a huge
engine of war. There had come to him at last a sense of duty where
Alma Grier was concerned. She was nearly fifty years of age, and he was
fifty-nine; she was a widow with this world's goods; she had been to him
how near and dear! for a brief hour, and then--no more. He knew the boy
was his son, because he saw his own face, as it had been in his youth,
though his mother's look was also there-transforming, illumining.

He had a pang as he saw the two at the close of his meeting filtering
out into the great retort of the world. Then it was that he had the
impulse to go to the woman's home, express his sorrow, and in some small
sense wipe out his wrong by offering her marriage. He had not gone.

He knew of Carnac's success in the world of Art; and how he had
alienated his reputed father by an independence revolting to a slave of
convention. He had even bought, not from Carnac, but from a dealer, two
of Carnac's pictures and a statue of a riverman. Somehow the years
had had their way with him. He had at long last realized that material
things were not the great things of life, and that imagination, however
productive, should be guided by uprightness of soul.

One thing was sure, the boy had never been told who his father was. That
Barouche knew. He had the useful gift of reading the minds of people in
their faces. From Carnac's face, from Carnac's mother's face, had come
to him the real story. He knew that Alma Grier had sinned only once and
with him. In the first days after that ill-starred month, he had gone
to her, only to be repelled as a woman can repel whose soul has been
shocked, whose self-respect has been shamed.

It had been as though she thrust out arms of infinite length to push him
away, such had been the storm of her remorse, such the revulsion against
herself and him. So they had fallen apart, and he had seen his boy
grow up independent, original, wilful, capable--a genius. He read
the newspaper reports of what had happened the day before with senses
greatly alive.

After all, politics was unlike everything else. It was a profession
recruited from all others. The making of laws was done by all