nute or two.'

'Ah! It was that minute or two that did it. Well, I let it out, the
rotten little secret. I admit it wasn't on the square, that bit of
business. But, on the other hand, it wasn't anything really bad--like
cruelty to animals or ruining a girl. Of course, the chap was your
father, but, but----. Look here, May, you ought to be able to see that I
was exactly the same man after I told you as I was before. You ought to
be able to see that. My character wasn't wrecked because I happened to
split on myself, like an ass, about that affair. Mind you, I don't blame
you. You can't help your feelings. But do you suppose there's a single
man on this blessed earth without a secret? I'm not going to grovel
before gods or men. I'm not going to pretend I'm so frightfully sorry.
I'm sorry in a way. But can't you see----'

'Don't say any more, Ted,' she begged him, fingering her sash. 'I know
all that. I know it all, and everything else you can say. Oh, my darling
boy! do you think I would look down on you ever so little because
of--what you told me? Who am I? I wouldn't care twopence even if----'

'But it's between us all the same,' he broke in. 'You can't get over
it.'

'Get over it!' she repeated lamely.

'Can you? Have you?' He pinned her to a direct answer.

She did not flinch.

'No,' she said.

'I thought you would have done,' he remarked, half to himself. 'I
thought you would. I thought you were enough a woman of the world for
that, May. It isn't as if the confounded thing had made any real
difference to your father. The old man died, and----'

'Ted!' she exclaimed, 'I shall have to tell you, after all. It killed
him.'

'What killed him? He died of gastritis.'

'He was ill with gastritis, but he died of suicide. It's easy for a
gastritis patient to commit suicide. And father did.'

'Why?'

'Oh, ruin, despair! He'd been in difficulties for a long time. He said
that selling those shares just one day too soon was the end of it. When
he saw them going up day after day, it got on his mind. He said he knew
he would never, never have any luck. And then ...'

'You kept it quiet.' He was walking about the room.

'Yes, that was pretty easy.'

'And did your mother know?'

He turned and looked at her.

'Yes, mother knew. It finished her. Oh, Ted!' she burst out, 'if you'd
only telegraphed to him the next morning that the shares weren't sold,
things might have been quite different.'

'You mean I killed yo