“I can’t see it, Robert,” he said finally and determinedly. “I can appreciate the motive that prompts you to make this offer. But I can’t see the wisdom of my taking it. Your opportunity is your opportunity. I don’t want it. We can make all the changes you suggest if you take the stock. I’m rich enough anyhow. Bygones are bygones. I’m perfectly willing to talk with you from time to time. That’s all you want. This other thing is simply a sop with which to plaster an old wound. You want my friendship and so far as I’m concerned you have that. I don’t hold any grudge against you. I won’t.” Robert looked at him fixedly. He half smiled. He admired Lester in spite of all that he had done to him—in spite of all that Lester was doing to him now. “I don’t know but what you’re right, Lester,” he admitted finally. “I didn’t make this offer in any petty spirit though. I wanted to patch up this matter of feeling between us. I won’t say anything more about it. You’re not coming down to Cincinnati soon, are you?” “I don’t expect to,” replied Lester. “If you do I’d like to have you come and stay with us. Bring your wife. We could talk over old times.” Lester smiled an enigmatic smile. “I’ll be glad to,” he said, without emotion. But he remembered that in the days of Jennie it was different. They would never have receded from their position regarding her. “Well,” he thought, “perhaps I can’t blame them. Let it go.” They talked on about other things. Finally Lester remembered an appointment. “I’ll have to leave you soon,” he said, looking at his watch. “I ought to go, too,” said Robert. They rose. “Well, anyhow,” he added, as they walked toward the cloakroom, “we won’t be absolute strangers in the future, will we?” “Certainly not,” said Lester. “I’ll see you from time to time.” They shook hands and separated amicably. There was a sense of unsatisfied obligation and some remorse in Robert’s mind as he saw his brother walking briskly away. Lester was an able man. Why was it that there was so much feeling between them—had been even before Jennie had appeared? Then he remembered his old thoughts about “snaky deeds.” That was what his brother lacked, and that only. He was not crafty; not darkly cruel, hence. “What a world!” he thought. On his part Lester went away feeling a slight sense of opposition to, but also of sympathy for, his brother. He was not so terribly bad—not different from other men. Why criticize? What would he have done if he had been in Robert’s place? Robert was getting along. So was he. He could see now how it all came about—why he had been made the victim, why his brother had been made the keeper of the great fortune. “It’s the way the world runs,” he thought. “What difference does it make? I have enough to live on. Why not let it go at that?” CHAPTER LXI