"Not to-night, Dick." Mostyn touched the angry spot on the brow lightly and bent down lower. "I have to go out this evening. I have an engagement." The look of despair darkening the little flushed face went straight to the heart of the father, and yet he said: "You must go to sleep now. I must hurry. I have to dress. Good night." Mostyn went back to his bureau. The reflection of his face in the tilted mirror caught and held his attention. Could that harsh semblance of a man be himself? Various periods of his life flashed in separate pictures before him. Glimpses of his college days; this and that gay prank of irresponsible youth. Then came incidents of his first business ventures; his dealings with Jefferson Henderson stood out sharply. The old man's first intuitive fears of coming loss rang in his ears, followed by curses of helpless, astounded despair. One after another these things piled thick and fast upon him. He saw his first meeting with Marie; then that crisis, the transcendent uplift in the mountains, when for the first time in his life he actually reached for something beyond and above himself through the mediumship of Dolly Drake, that wonderful embodiment of the, for him, unattainable. He had lost out there. He had slipped at the foot of the heights up which she was leading him. He heard the gate-latch click, and old Mitchell's thumping tread on the veranda steps as he descended to meet some one. Going to a window and parting the curtains cautiously, Mostyn looked down on the walk. It was his wife. He saw her meet her father, but she did not slacken her brisk walk toward the house. "Where have you been all day?" the old man demanded, following behind. "I don't have to tell you," Irene answered. "You are driving me crazy with your eternal suspicions. If I keep on answering your questions you will never stop. Let me alone. You needn't watch me like a hawk. I am old enough to take care of myself." An inarticulate reply came up from the old man, and the next moment Mostyn heard Irene ascending the stairs. The door of her room opened and shut. Mostyn distinctly heard the turning of the key. He looked at his watch. It was half past eight. He would have to hurry to catch a car. He went back to the bureau. At this instant something happened. Hearing a low sound and looking in the glass, he saw a little white-robed figure creeping stealthily across the floor to his bed. He pretended not to see, and watched Dick as he softly crept between the sheets. Turning round, he caught the boy's sheepish stare, which suddenly became a look of grim, even defiant, determination. "Why did you come, Dick?" he asked, and as he spoke he crept toward the bed like a man in a dream drawn to some ravishing delight. He sat down on the edge of the bed. He caught the child's little hand in his own. The nerves of his whole yearning soul seemed centered in his fingers.