He out-Enochs Enoch Arden. Yet—why should I disguise the fact to myself—I hate him. That, too, I suppose, is melodrama. But do what I will, he remains detestable to me. I cannot trust him. I try, however, not to show it. Dibdin has acquired a deep furrow between the eyes, due doubtless to his sense of responsibility in having resuscitated Pendleton. He carries the air of some magician or sorcerer who has evoked a demon and is overwhelmed with terror by the problem of what to do with him. But I must in decency acknowledge that Pendleton’s behavior has been without blemish. Dibdin had sent me a long night letter from San Francisco saying he would remain there a few days, "to give the fellow chance to bolt if he wants to." There had been other telegrams. I was not to meet them at the train but to give explicit directions. It was as well. I could not have met Pendleton at the train even if he were coming from the dead. A week ago, when Dibdin telephoned from the city, I went so far as to order a cab to meet them. There again the histrionics of the situation were at a hopeless disadvantage. For what I remember most vividly of that Saturday evening was the sickness of my soul as I sat awaiting their arrival. Again and again I had steeled myself to tell the children of their father’s coming. I framed words and sentences in my mind until the cold perspiration moistened my forehead, but I could not face the ordeal. I had thought I knew myself—that I was steeled to the tests of life. But I saw I was still a reed. It came to within a couple of hours before their arrival and still I had not told them. I found myself on my two-inch terrace and a stream of profanity was breaking from my lips. On a sudden I saw Jimmie standing beside me. Shame and chagrin overtook me and I bent down to him and begged him to forgive me. "Don’t you mind me, Uncle Ranny," he put his hand in mine. "I’m a man, and I know a man has got to swear sometimes." "No, Jimmie—not if the man has brains enough with which to think." That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my clamped and aching skull. "Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to her." Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow. Some moments elapsed before Alicia could come to me and during that time I had a mad impulse to fly from it all, to, seize my hat and steal away, to take a train to the city and not to return, until it was all over. But I waited nevertheless and Alicia, who had been helping Griselda, came running out flushed, with concern in her eyes. "Alicia," I began miserably, "I have tried to screw up my courage to tell the children about the coming of—of their father. But I simply can’t do it, Alicia; it’s—it’s beyond me. I—I want you to tell them," I faltered like a guilty schoolboy. The girl winced perceptibly but— "All right," she answered; "do you mean now?"