Hugh nodded emphatically. “Yes, failure,” he emphasized. “My children love me, not for myself, but because I am able to gratify all of their whims and desires, and strange to say, I am perfectly willing to pay for their show of affection, because it is the only tie that binds me to my home.” Tears of distress which in spite of her pride forced themselves to unwelcome eyes, trembled on Marjorie Benton’s eyelids and splashed down on the hands folded so quietly over her somber gray gown. “Hugh!” she cried, distressed. “Surely you don’t know what you say! What about your wife?” “You asked the same thing years ago, Marjorie,” Hugh answered bitterly, “when we discussed the advisability of coming to New York. You were all the world to me then, and——” “And _now_ I am nothing.” Marjorie’s quivering lips completed the sentence. “I—I understand, Hugh.” “You are still the mother of my children, despite the fact that they are both disappointments to me.” Hugh was calm in the face of his wife’s tragedy, but his very calmness gave back to his wife some of her fighting spirit. “If they are disappointments to you, it is your own fault,” she flared. “You humor them beyond all reason. I try to enforce strict discipline, and you invariably interfere. This very evening when I attempted to reprimand Elinor, you resorted to almost childish subterfuge to prevent an argument.” “I’ll tell you why I interfere.” Hugh was getting to the gist of his lecture. “It is for the simple reason that I consider you the real culprit. The children are not to blame because they are selfish, worldly, way beyond their age, and lacking in love and respect for their parents. You raised them both in schools and colleges where they were thrown in contact with the wrong companions. Had you kept your children with you and reared them in the environment of home and love, everything would have been different.” “How like you to put the blame on me.” Marjorie’s lip curled in scorn, and her foot in its common sense high shoe tapped impatiently on the soft-toned rug. But Hugh Benton was in too deadly earnest to be switched from his main topic by a side remark. He went on, as though his wife had not spoken. “And now, you expect a girl and boy, grown up, to obey you implicitly, and change in a few days the training they have received for years. I tell you, Marjorie, you are employing the wrong method. You must realize it is too late for you to command, and if you persist in continually arguing with Elinor, and criticising her every act, you will drive her to desperation, that’s all. She is a self-willed and headstrong girl, and it is necessary to handle her with caution and the utmost diplomacy.” Marjorie could not forbear one bitter reminder. “As long as you find so much fault with your family, why don’t you devote less time to your club and try to remodel them?”