His eyes did not waver. You must remember his age, the immaculate, ruthless, mid-Victorian 'teens; and you must remember his bringing-up. "And so this was my father," he said. And then he went on without waiting, his voice breaking into falsetto with the fierceness of his charge. "And you would have kept on lying to me! If I hadn't happened, just happened, to find you here, now, you would have gone on keeping me in the dark! You would have stood by and seen me--well--_go crazy!_ Yes, go crazy, thinking I was--well, thinking I was meant for it! And all to save your precious--" She was down on the floor again, what was left of the gentlewoman, wailing. "But you don't know what it means to a woman, Chris! You don't know what it means to a woman!" A wave of rebellion brought her up and she strained toward him across the coffin. "Isn't it something, then, that I gave you a father with a _mind_? And if you think you've been sinned against, think of _me_! Sin! You call it _sin_! Well, isn't it _anything at all_ that by my 'sin' my son's blood came down to him _clean_? Tell me that!" He shook himself, and his flame turned to sullenness. "It's not so," he glowered. All the girl in him, the poet, the hero-worshipping boy, rebelled. His harassed eyes went to the wall beyond and the faces there, the ghosts of the doomed, glorious, youth-ridden line, priceless possessions of his dreams. He would not lose them: he refused to be robbed of a tragic birthright. He wanted some gesture puissant enough to turn back and blot out all that had been told him. "It's not his!" he cried. And reaching out fiercely he dragged the 'cello away from the coffin's side. He stood for an instant at bay, bitter, defiant. "It's not his! It's mine! It's--it's--_ours!_" And then he fled out into the dark of the entrance-hall and up the black stairs. In his room there was no moonlight now, for the cloud ran over the sky and the rain had come. "It isn't so, it isn't so!" It was like a sob in his throat. He struck on the full strings. And listening breathless through the dying discord he heard the liquid whispers of the rain, nothing more. He lashed with a wild bow, time and again. But something was broken, something was lost: out of the surf of sound he could no longer fashion the measure of marching feet. The mad Kains had found him out, and cast him out. No longer could he dream them in dreams or run naked-hearted with them in the flood of the moon, for he was no blood of theirs, and they were gone. And huddling down on the edge of the bed, he wept.