The son obeyed mechanically, his frowning eyes fixed upon his father. Barron at once plunged into an account of his interview with Judith Sabin, omitting only those portions of it which connected the story with Meynell. It was evident, presently, that Stephen--to the dawning triumph of his father--listened with an increasingly troubled mind. And indeed, at the first whisper of the story, there had flashed through the young man's memory the vision of Meynell arguing and expostulating on that July afternoon, when he, Stephen, had spoken so confidingly, so unsuspectingly of his love for Hester. He recalled his own amazement, his sense of shock and strangeness. What Meynell said on that occasion seemed to have so little relation to what Meynell habitually was. Meynell, for whom love, in its spiritual aspect, was the salt and significance of life, the foundation of all wisdom--Meynell on that occasion had seemed to make comparatively nothing of love!--to deny its simplest rights--to put it despotically out of count. Stephen, as he had long recognized, had been overborne and silenced by Meynell's personality rather than by Meynell's arguments--by the disabling force mainly of his own devotion to the man who bade him wait and renounce. But in his heart he had never quite forgiven, or understood; and for all the subsequent trouble about Hester, all his own jealousy and pain, he had not been able to prevent himself from blaming Meynell. And now--now!--if this story were true--he began to understand. Poor child--poor mother! With the marriage of the child, must come--he felt the logic of it--the confession of the mother. A woman like Alice Puttenham, a man like Meynell, were not likely to give Hester to her lover without telling that lover what he had a right to know. Small blame to them if they were not prepared to bring about that crisis prematurely, while Hester was still so young! It must be faced--but not, _not_ till it must! Yes, he understood. A rush of warm and pitiful love filled his heart; while his intelligence dismally accepted and endorsed the story his father was telling with that heavy tragic touch which the son instinctively hated as insincere and theatrical. "Now then, perhaps,"--Barron wound up--"you will realize why it is I feel Meynell has acted considerately, and as any true friend of yours was bound to act. He knew--and you were ignorant. Such a marriage could not have been for your happiness, and he rightly interposed." "What difference does it make to Hester herself," cried Stephen hotly--"supposing the thing is true? I admit--it may be true," and as he spoke a host of small confirmations came thronging into his unwilling mind. "But in any case--" He walked up to his father again. "What have you done about it, father?" he said, sharply. "I suppose you went to Meynell at once." Barron smiled, with a lift of the eyebrows. He knocked off the end of his cigarette, and paused.