after a few broken remarks about the woman who had drawn him there, he came to an awkward silence. His father kept on smoking, as if waiting for a final statement. As it did not come, he spoke, in a clear, impartial voice.

"Yes, I have known all the Ellwells except these young people. I was just out of Camberton when the war broke out. John Ellwell shirked then; it was not much to do to go to the front. It was in the air to fight." He paused to let this aspect of the case sink in. "Later I was chairman of the committee that requested him to leave the Tremont Club. And still later, when his swindle on the exchange came to light, I helped his father hush the matter up. He was a bad lot."

"Yes," his son answered slowly. "An unusually bad lot. He is rotten!"

"Of course, besides the scandals we have mentioned there were, probably are, others with women. What you say about the children shows how impoverished is the blood. The son could hardly end otherwise. You have given him a new soil to grow in, but the end must be there!"

The old man pointed stiffly to the street. Jarvis Thornton made no reply. Presently his father continued:

"They were not transplanted in time. They are degenerate Puritans. There are a great many like them, who have petered out on the stony farms, or in little clerkships, or in asylums of one sort or another. The stock was too finely bred in and in, over and over, for three hundred years nearly. Insanity and vice have been hoarded and repressed and passed on." He seemed to speak with personal bitterness.

"We have the taint of scrofula, of drink, of insanity, all covered up. Those were wisest who scattered themselves forty years ago into new lands. Then the magnificent old stock took a new life. It would not be too much to say that wherever we find good life, hope, joy, or prosperity in our broad country, you may trace it all back to New England."

The son listened wonderingly to this essay on the Puritan stock.

"But I don't believe in it," the young man protested. "I don't believe that it is good science or good morals to hang about our necks this horrid millstone of heredity."

His father continued in his impartial tone. "You know how much of that rotten stuff is in our family. You remember the Sharps, and the Dingleys, and the Abraham Clarkes. You know your mother died from sheer exhaustion," the old man trembled, "and I have been spared for a fairly useless life by constant patching up. The war didn't knock me up only——"

"I will not believe it!" Jarvis Thornton uttered, in intense tones. His father sighed.

"And by some fortune you were spared; you have grown up strong and sound and equable. I led your interests to the line of work you have chosen, for a purpose——"

He paused again. "In order that sex, mere sex, might have no special unhealthy fascination for you; that you might meet these problems and treat them as judiciously as you would a matter of banking—without sentiment, without passion, without an ignorant, liquorish hallucination——"

The son raised his hand.

"And now it has come in a new way," he said, quietly, "through your pity and your generosity and your faith. But it has come."

What Jarvis Thornton replied was neither coherent nor weighty. He flung aside the idea of pity or generosity as absurd. He loved this woman for herself, because, because he loved her. His father smiled a sad, kind smile.

"The mother does not seem to have added much to the blood." He threw this out in order to get the subject back into more reasonable channels.

"No, she is a weak woman. But what of it? I don't marry the family. We shall leave them and build a new life, and break the curse." He smiled, slightly.

"Granting your beliefs that no harm would come to your children, that it is all chance about these matters," persisted the father, "still you cannot escape the family. You marry the conditions; they will remain with you. They, if nothing else, will ruin your life."

The younger man rose as if to shake off a physical bandage. For the first time in his life he felt conscious of a rebellion with the elemental conditions of existence.

"What if it does mean corruption and misery! I want my joy, my life, even if they write 'Failure' at the bottom of my page."

"No, no!" his father protested. "You will take the pain all right and the consequences like a man, but you will never believe that swinish statement you have just made."

This brought the younger man to his calmer mood.

"I hate them," he said, bitterly, "more than you can; but her I love."

"And to her you will sacrifice all?"

His father looked at him searchingly, longingly.

"Yes, if need be, all, but you!"

The old man smiled coolly.

"I shall not count long, and you are independent, anyway. But I don't care to put the matter on such a footing. We have not lived that way."

"I will do whatever you desire," the son said, "except——"

"I shall ask nothing," his father replied, gently. "If you mean to marry her you must do so now, when she will need you most. There can be no compromise, unless your own mind is divided."

As Jarvis Thornton left the house that night he felt that he had dealt his father a blow.

VII

Some days later when Jarvis Thornton took the familiar turnpike road he had not recovered from the serious mood his father's talk had brought about. It hung on him like a weight. He did not ride at a lover's pace; rather, cool and determined, with a spice of pride in following his own judgment. But the old man's prophecy met an answering fear in his own mind—it was dangerous to pluck roses from some ruins.

His father's sweetness in the matter got hold of him, and he began to appreciate, in a vague way, the yearning that old men have to witness fulfilment on the part of the younger generation. Mere age, he saw, reduces the complexity of desire, but renders it single and intense. Whether his father was right or not in his gloomy analysis, he was deeply convinced and foiled. His last method of success had turned out illusive, yet he had not reproached, nor domineered, nor dictated, nor appealed. He had expressed a little of his keen sorrow, but insidiously this attitude had tainted the young man's ecstasy.

Would she comprehend his father's nobility? He could hardly explain the situation to her in all its bearings, even if she were fitted to understand. And he felt that hers would be a woman's sympathy, so ready, yet on the surface. It needed a man, with his less expressive nature, to comprehend deep down the bearings of this case. However, if she loved him—it was pleasant to feel that she did love him—she must plan with him to defeat the old man's prophecy. They would cut loose from the conditions, come what might. He closed his mouth firmly. Manlike he planned as if he knew all the elements of the question.

His horse trotted up the little gravel way to the Four Corners. Suddenly she appeared standing on the big grooved millstone which served as a horse-block. Her white dress had an under bodice of pink, that gave her more than ever the appearance of an opening water-lily.

"I have a new walk for you to-day."

Her greeting betrayed no surprise. She was evidently sure of the outcome. As Thornton flung himself from his horse, he had a sensation of yielding—to the pre-arranged.

"But you must be so hot," she added, taking in his solemn face. "Come into the pantry while I make you a cocktail. Papa says I could get a place as a bar-maid."

With a ripple of contented laughter she led the way to the little pantry over the wine-cellar. It was stocked and arranged like a miniature bar; a high side-board was carefully crowded with polished cut-glass, and the little room exhaled aromatic odors from the various wines and bitters. He sat down near the open window while she busied herself in crushing ice to a flaky coolness and