The children were mine! Alicia was mine! Would that I could bind them to me with triple brass. But I have bound them. In ridding myself of Pendleton, I had made them securely mine. Suppose he should return one day? They would be grown—reared by me. He would be merely the family skeleton. What is a family without a skeleton? He was that now. He wouldn’t matter. It is human destiny to revolve about the child, about children. With the exception of Pendleton the outcast and Gertrude the—well, Gertrude—every one attained completeness only in rearing the next generation. And as I rubbed my body with the coarse towel I felt complete! As for Alicia—ah—well, who was I to expect from life _everything_? At any rate she was mine, now, even as the children were mine. And the very first thing I would do—oh, jeweled inspiration—is to adopt her, legally and formally. That thought suddenly made the blood sing in my ears to so delicious a tune that absurdly, ridiculously, I began like some pagan or satyr to dance about the room. _Mine, mine, mine_! I danced into the room in which Pendleton had not slept and with crazy gestures made as if to sweep his memory out of the garish window. I had saved the children and safeguarded Alicia. I felt I had played the man. And let no man say he has lived until he has fought for those he loves. Inevitably my mind dwelt upon Alicia. Who is that child? What were her beginnings? Did she come out of the sea and chaos of life only to vanish in some bitter poignant dream like that of last night? I only knew that she was mine now and that I would bind her to me yet more strongly. I would not ask for too much; I would be humbly grateful. She had come into my life as a divine offering and I would not question overmuch. There is no other origin. I felt supremely, tremulously content. If only she would abide and never leave me! And it occurred to me, as I stood shaving before the mirror, that life is a beleaguered city, with deadly arrows falling over the wall, and the great enemy, death, certain to enter in the end. But by virtue of the love implanted in the human heart, one may snatch many hours of happiness amid the tumult and the shouting in the winding ways. Over my hasty breakfast I recalled with a shock of guilt that I had not yet communicated with Griselda. But as I was already late I decided I should call her from the office. How swift is mischief to enter in the thoughts of desperate men I discovered bitterly only a few minutes later. For the first word I received upon entering Visconti’s was that Griselda had called me repeatedly and Griselda’s news chilled and numbed every fiber in my body. Alicia had disappeared! Pendleton! That was the thought that seared my brain. "You—don’t think"—I stammered brokenly to Griselda, "that she—that Pendleton—"