John Denby, too, was white and shaken. He, too, had been dreading this meeting, and longing for it--that it might be over. There was now, however, on his part, no feeling of chagrin and impotence because of things that had not been said. There was only a shuddering relief that things had _not_ been said; that he had been able to carry it straight through as he had planned; that he had not shown his boy how much he--cared. He was glad that his pride had been equal to the strain; that he had not weakly succumbed at the first glimpse of his son's face, the first touch of his son's hand, as he had so feared that he would do. And he had not succumbed--though he had almost gone down before the quick terror and affectionate dismay that had leaped into his son's voice and eyes at sight of his own changed appearance. (Why _could_ not he keep those abominable portions of his anatomy from being so wretchedly telltale?) But he had remembered in time. Did the boy think, then, that a mere word of sympathy now could balance the scale against so base a disregard of everything loyal and filial a month ago? Then he would show that it could not. And he had shown it. What if he did know now, even better than he had known it all these last miserable four weeks, that his whole world had lain in his boy's hand, that his whole life had been bounded by his boy's smile, his whole soul immersed in his boy's future? What if he did know that all the power and wealth and fame of name that he had won were as the dust in his fingers--if he might not pass them on to his son? He was not going to let Burke know this. Indeed, no! Burke had made his own bed. He should lie in it. Deliberately he had chosen to cast aside the love and companionship of a devoted father at the beck of an almost unknown girl's hand. Should the father then offer again the once-scorned love and companionship? Had he no pride--no proper sense of simple right and justice? No self-respect, even? It was thus, and by arguments such as these, that John Denby had lashed himself into the state of apparently cool, courteous indifference that had finally carried him successfully through the interview just closed. For a long time John Denby sat motionless, his arms outflung across the letters that might have meant so much, but that did mean so little, to him--now. Then slowly he raised his head and fixed somber, longing eyes on the door that had so recently closed behind his son.