"Ah! that gets you, doesn't it? Now you're beginning to see what I'm driving at, don't you? Put your mind back to the night you found Graham here with me. You saved him from forging your name, and that was good. But what led him up to that? Did you ask yourself? Did you go to Graham and gain his confidence? Did you wonder whether there was a woman behind it all who would never have come into his life if you had dealt by him like a man and a father,--the sort of woman who has made necessary these things round your laboratory and caused you to bend over your experiments for years and years?" "Good God! What do you mean?" Peter raised his voice. "Why should your sons be immune? What have _you_ ever done to render them so? Why am I now standing here with this revolver in my hand? Look at me! A few hours ago I had health and everything in the world that makes life worth living, except a father. At this moment, because I've never had a father, I'm so terrified that I should be a criminal if I married the girl I love that I'm going to kill myself." "Why? What have you done?" "I've been two nights in the bed of the sort of woman whose work you are trying to undo." The Doctor staggered, and then rose up in his wrath. "_You_ have? You, _my_ son,--with such a mother--with such home influence! You mean to tell me that you've descended to such depths of immorality that you've gone back on everything that your education has made of you? It's unthinkable--unbelievable. You must be a mere animal to have done such a thing." What else he would have said in his emotion and horror no one can say. A cry of pain and rage rang out. The injustice of his father's narrow, inhuman point of view, his inability to show him, even by his impending death, that he must wake up to his duty and stand by Graham and his sisters, sent the blood into Peter's fevered brain. "My God!" he cried. "You dare to talk like that to me? You dare to kick me in the face after I've told you that I'm ignorant--without listening to my explanation as to how I got into that woman's apartment. All right, then, I'm not going to be the only one to pay. You shall take your share of it. The sins of the children are brought about by the neglect of the fathers, and we'll go and stand together before the Judge to-night for a verdict on that count." He raised the revolver, aimed it at his father's head, put his finger on the trigger---- There was a blinding flash of lightning. A yellow quivering flame seemed to cut the room in half between the two angry men---- An instant later the Doctor saw Peter standing with both hands over his face. The unfired revolver lay on the table in all its ugliness. And presently, when he had realized what had happened, he went nearer. "God didn't intend that you should do that," he said. And then his voice broke and he went forward to put his arms round Peter's shoulders. "Give me another chance, my dearest boy!" he cried. "Give me another chance!"