Young Danny's voice rose in pitch at each word as with added realization the strain on his emotions increased. His body sagged forward and the hands on the table bore much of its weight; so much that the elbows threatened to give, as had his knees. "To go away--why? Why--is this?" In his query was something of the terror of a frightened child; in his eyes something of the look of a wounded beast. "You ask me why!" Lenox senior straightened with a jerk and followed the exclamation with something that had been a laugh until, driven through the rage within him, it became only a rattling rasp in his throat. "You ask me why!" he repeated. "You ask me why!" His voice dropped to a thin whisper; then, anger carrying it above its normal tone: "You stand here in this room, your face like suet from months and years of debauchery, your mind unable to catch my idea because of the poison you have forced on it, because of the stultifying thoughts you have let occupy it, because of the ruthless manner in which you have wasted its powers of preception, of judgment, and ask me why!" In quick gesture he leveled a vibrating finger at the face of his son and with pauses between the words declared: "_You_--are--why!" Danny's elbows bent still more under the weight on them, and his lips worked as he tried to force a dry throat through the motions of swallowing. On his face was reflected just one emotion--surprise. It was not rage, not resentment, not shame, not fear--just surprise. He was utterly confused by the abruptness of his father's attack; he was unable to plumb the depths of its significance, although an inherent knowledge of the other's moods told him that he faced disaster. Then the older man was saying: "You have stripped yourself of everything that God and man could give you. You have thrown the gems of your opportunity before your swinish desires. You have degenerated from the son your mother bore to a worthless, ambitionless, idealless, thoughtless--drunkard!" Danny took a half-step closer to the table, his eyes held on those others with mechanical fixity. "Father--but, dad--" he tried to protest. Again the upraised, commanding palm. "I have stood it as long as I can. I have suggested from time to time that you give serious consideration to things about you and to your future; suggested, when a normal young man would have gone ahead of his own volition to meet the exigencies every individual must face sooner or later. "But you would have none of it! From your boyhood you have been a waster. I hoped once that all the trouble you gave us was evidence of a spirit that would later be directed toward a good end. But I was never justified in that. "You wasted your university career. Why, you weren't even a good athlete! You managed to graduate, but only to befog what little hope then remained to me.