To have this impulse to arise and go to my father thrown back on itself was the hardest thing in my experience. Somehow I had kept the conviction that if ever I repented that door would be open to my return. It had not really occurred to me that they wouldn’t say at home, “It is meet that we should make merry and be glad.” That my brothers might refuse to join in the chorus was a possibility. That my sister might not be over-enthusiastic in doing so I should be able to understand. But that my father and mother.... Throughout my stay in Atlantic City I had been saying to myself, “Well, if I’ve thrust a sword into your hearts, old dears, you’ve jolly well thrust one into mine; and so we’re quits.” “When did it happen?” was the first question I was sufficiently master of myself to ask. “Annette heard yesterday. I think it was the day before.” “Do you know if—if he’d been ill?” “He hasn’t been well for a long time, Annette says—not for two or three years; but the end was—well, it was heart failure. He was in his motor—going home. When the car drove up to the door they found him—” It was the picture thus presented that made me put my hand to my forehead and bow my head. I was thinking of him seated in his corner of the car, stately, unbending, unpardoning, dead. I was thinking of the plight of my poor little mother when the man she had for so many years worshiped and obeyed was no longer there to give her his commands. I was thinking of the commotion in the family, of the stir of interest throughout the community. A prince and a great man would have fallen in Israel, and all our Canadian centers would be aquiver with the news. Jerry and Jack would cable to my sister in England, as well as to our uncles and aunts in that country and in the United States. There were cousins and friends who wouldn’t be forgotten. I alone was left out. That was, however, more than I could believe. It was more, too, than I was willing to allow Regina Barry to suppose. “There must be a telegram for me at my rooms in New York,” I managed to stammer, though I fear my tone lacked conviction. To this she said nothing. She had, in fact, as Cantyre informed me later, already ascertained that up to the hour of her departure from New York there was none. I talked to Cantyre on the telephone immediately on returning to my hotel. He said that, though in my rooms there were some odds and ends of mail matter which he hadn’t yet forwarded, there was no telegram or Canadian letter. Having called up Annette, I got a repetition of the meager information Miss Barry had given me, though I learned in addition that the funeral was to take place on the following day, which would be Christmas Eve. Her father had already gone to Montreal to take part in the ceremony. The embarrassment of her tone in saying she was surprised that I had received no announcement told me that she was not surprised. It was the last touch to the certainty that I had been omitted with intention.