The sudden flight jarred Hugh's pleasurable sense of novelty. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Now he was in for it! She would alarm the house, rouse the servants--he should have a staring, domestic audience for the imminent reconciliation his sobered sense told him was so necessary. Why could he not slip back into the old rut, he thought sullenly, without such a boring, perfunctory ceremony? He had intended to postpone this, if possible, until a night's sleep had fortified him. But now the sooner the ordeal was over, the better! Shrugging his shoulders, he went quickly down the stair to the library. He had known exactly what he should see there--the vivid girl with the hue of fright in her cheeks, the shaded lamp, the wheel-chair, and the feeble old man with his furrowed face and gray mustaches. What he himself should say he had not had time to reflect. The figure in the chair looked up as the door opened. "Hugh!" he cried, and half lifted himself from his seat. Then he settled back, and the sunken, indomitable eyes fastened themselves on his son's face. Hugh was melodramatic--cheaply so. He saw the girl start at the name, saw her hands catch at the kimono to draw its folds over the bare white throat, saw the rich color that flooded her brow. He saw himself suddenly the moving hero of the stagery, the tractive force of the situation. Real tears came to his eyes--tears of insincere feeling, due partly to the cheap whisky he had drunk that day, whose outward consequences he had so drastically banished, and partly to sheer nervous excitation. "Father!" he said, and came and caught the gaunt hand that shook against the chair. Then the deeps of the old man's heart were suddenly broken up. "My son!" he cried, and threw his arms about him. "Hugh--my boy, my boy!" Jessica waited to hear no more. Thrilling with gladness, and flushing with the sudden recollection of her bare throat and feet, she slipped away to her room to creep into bed and lie wide-eyed and thinking. What did he look like? Of his face she had never seen even a counterfeit presentment. Through what adventures had he passed? Now that he had come home, forgiving and forgiven, would he stay? He had been in his room when she entered it with the roses--must have guessed, if he had not already known, that she was blind. Would he guess that she had cared for that room, had placed fresh flowers there often and often?