“Hawkins has promised he will never drink again.” Paul Veniza, with a sudden start, stared at Hawkins, and then a sort of kindly tolerance dawned in his face. “My poor friend!” said Paul Veniza as though he were comforting a wayward child, and went over and laid his hand affectionately on Hawkins' arm. “I have told Hawkins,” went on John Bruce, “that I love Claire, that I asked her to marry me; and Hawkins in turn has told me he is Claire's father, and how he brought her to you and Mrs. Veniza when she was a baby, and of the pledge he made you then. It is because I love Claire too that I feel I can speak now. You once told Hawkins how he could redeem his daughter. He wants to redeem her now. He has promised never to drink again.” Paul Veniza's face had whitened a little. Half in a startled, half in a troubled way, he looked once more at John Bruce and then at Hawkins. “My poor friend!” he said again. John Bruce's hand on the arm of his chair clenched suddenly. “You may perhaps feel that he should not have told me of his relationship to Claire; but it was this damnable situation with Crang that forced the issue.” Paul Veniza left Hawkins' side and began to pace the room in an agitated way. “No!” he said heavily. “I do not blame Hawkins. We--we neither of us know what to do. It is a terrible, an awful thing. Crang is like some loathsome creature to her, and yet in some way that I cannot discover he has got her into his power. I have tried everything, used every argument I can with her, pleaded with her--and it has been useless.” He raised his arms suddenly above his head, partly it seemed in supplication, partly in menace. “Oh, God!” he cried out. “I, too, love her, for she has really been my daughter through all these years. But I do not quite understand.” He turned to Hawkins. “Even if you kept your promise now, my friend, what connection has that with Doctor Crang? Could that in any way prevent this marriage?” It was John Bruce who answered. “It is the last ditch,” he said evenly; “the one way you have not tried--to tell her her own and her father's story. I do not say it will succeed. But it is the great crisis in her life. It is the one thing in the world that ought to sway her, win her. Her father! After twenty years--her father!” Paul Veniza's hands, trembling, ruffled through his white hair. Hawkins' fingers fumbled, now with the buttons on his vest, now with the brim of his hat which He had picked up aimlessly from the table; and his eyes, lifting from the floor, glanced timorously, almost furtively, at Paul Veniza, and sought the floor again. John Bruce got up from his chair and stepped toward them.