It may have been that some increase of care on my part making itself apparent was the first warning to him that all was not as it used to be, for there came a night when he called to me as I was leaving his room--after seeing him comfortably established--in a voice with a queer ring of emotion in it. “What is it, dad?” I asked, hurrying back to his bedside. “I’m wakeful to-night, my lad; well and easy, but wakeful.” “Shall I stop with you a bit longer?” I saw he wished it and sat myself down upon the foot of the bed. “Good lad,” he said. “I don’t deserve all this, Renalt. It should be a blank and empty thing to review a life spent in idleness and self-indulgence. I ought to feel that, and yet I’m at peace. Why wasn’t I of your militant philosophers, who treating love like any other luxury, find salve for the bitter sting of it in a brave independence of righteousness!” “As well ask, dad, why in battle the bullets spare some and mangle others.” “You mean the faculty of overriding fate is constitutional, not a courageous theory, Renalt?” “Yet I think your philosopher would be the first to acknowledge its truth.” “Of course. He’d have a principle to prove. But I can’t gather consolation there for having wittingly sunk myself to the beasts.” “Dad!” “Why should I mince matters? Let me look at you full face. I have never been a liar, but I’ve chosen to deceive myself into the belief that mere brute self-indulgence was a fine revolt against the tyranny of the gods.” “It may have been nature’s counter-irritant to unbearable suffering.” “Sophistry, my boy. It’s out of the kindness of your heart, but it’s sophistry. Better to die shrieking under the knife than to live to be a hopeless, disfigured cripple. Look at me lying here. What heritage of virtue, what example of endurance, shall I leave to my children?” “You have never complained.” “No comfort, Renalt--none. I nursed my resentment from base fear only that by revealing it, it would dissipate. With such a belief I have to face the Supreme Court up there; and”--he looked at me earnestly--“before very long, I think.” I shook my head in silence. I could find no word to say. “Am I afraid?” he went on, still intently regarding me. “I think not--at present. Yet I have some bitter charges to answer.” “This rest will restore you again, dad.” He did not seem to hear me. His eyes left my face and he continued in a murmuring voice: “The last dispossession the old suffer is sleep, it seems. Balm in Gilead--balm in Gilead!” “What little breath will keep the spark alive,” I thought as I sat and watched the worn quiet figure. The face looked as if molded out of wax and so moved me that presently I must rise and bend over it, thinking the end had actually come while I watched.