“Then I studied opportunities--and found them. So I went to the president, who was a personal friend, but too busy to remember personal friends except in his private office, and had a long talk with him. A special position was made for me. I changed our system of accounts, introduced methods and checks that are now in use in nearly all the big banks, and I became an adviser in certain deals. It seems I had some gifts in that direction, my son, peculiar to myself and therefore, I feared, not transmissible to my son. And--well, I made much more than I had intended to steal; and made it much more easily. But I kept my nominal salary from the bank exactly what it had been, twenty-five hundred dollars a year, that I might continue to be an old and trusted employee--to remind me of what I might have been! It was not hard to make money. I studied money-making in order not to want to kiss you--you were about eight then--and I devoted myself to evolving financial plans for a certain group of capitalists associated with our bank. It was the only way in which I could love you with safety to myself and to you. But I prospered so much that I brought upon your head and mine a second danger, far greater than the love of a father; who, though too weak to refuse you anything, was too poor to give you the easiest way to perdition.” The old man looked sternly at his son. “It was the danger of being the son of a rich man--the same man, but rich!” “And is that why at college you always sent what I asked for?” “I couldn't help sending you what you asked me for. The moment you asked I had to send it, my son. But my salvation lay in realizing my helplessness. I kept close tabs on you at college through friends you could not suspect, and because the reports were not alarming I did not disturb you. I merely fought against my desire to give you more than you asked for, to give you what I could easily afford to give you, what would have given me pleasure to do by giving pleasure to you. I fought that desire--and wrote to you about your studies and never mentioned money, for I did not wish to lie to you. Do you know why, after you were twelve, you didn't spend your vacation with me? Because I knew that if you did I could never let you go away from me, and I knew you must go back to the school your mother had picked out for you. I wanted to give you tutors, to keep you at home; and that would not have been good for you and I should have broken my promise. I knew if I let myself go I'd be lost forever.” Mr. Leigh's lips, which he tried to compress, were quivering. Then he tried to smile, reassuringly, to convince his son that he had not let himself go after all.