Mar was conscious that his own spirit was contracting in a creeping chill. But he said to himself it was only because he had made the mistake of criticizing his wife (by implication) before her son. It was right and proper that Trenn, on such an occasion, should range himself on the side of his mother’s family. Mar’s conception of loyalty commonly protected him from appearing to pass adverse judgment on the Trennors. But he was excited and overwrought to-day. _He_, not Trenn. All through the story, that for Mar was of such palpitating importance, this well-groomed youth had kept himself so well in hand, that his father, looking at the “correct,” cool face, had somewhat modified the presentment of the narrative, had cut description, emotion, wonder, and come to Hecuba as quickly as might be. And yet now that, with as business-like an air as he could muster, he had revealed his great secret—handed over the long-treasured legacy—something still in the judicial young face that gave the older man a sensation of acute self-consciousness, made him in some inexplicable manner feel “cheap.” But he would conquer the ridiculous inclination. It was for Mar an hour of tremendous significance. He had been waiting for it for eighteen years. “After all,” he said, making a fresh start, “you don’t need imagination in this case. You need only to use your eyes—” Trenn lifted his, and the use he made of them was to look at his father. Didn’t say a single word. Just looked at the heavily-lined face a moment and then allowed his clear, brown eyes to drop till they rested on the toes of his own immaculate boots. Hardly more than three seconds between the raising and the lowering of the eyes. Not a sound in the room. And yet between the meeting of that look and the losing of it, Nathaniel Mar passed through the most painful crisis of a life made well acquainted with pain. There is a special sting in the skepticism of the young. They should be full of faith, inclined even to credulity. Fit task for their elders, the checking of too generous ardor. But for the elder to detect the junior in thinking him foolishly enthusiastic, childishly gullible—there is, in that conjuncture, something to the older mind quite specially wounding. It passes the limit of mere personal humiliation. It takes on the air of an affront against the seemliness of nature. The elder has betrayed his class and kind—has laid open to callow derision the dignity of the riper years. Mar waited. And little as he looked like it he was praying. “Oh, my boy, believe me! Have faith that what I say is so. And then I’ll have faith that all the loss will be won back, through _you_, Trenn. I’ll take heart again. It all depends on you. We’ll do great things together, Trenn—you and I—oh, believe, believe!” But Trennor Mar sat there on the narrow ledge of the window-sill absolutely silent, with his brown eyes on his shining boots.