Then, like a shaft of light across memory, came the recollection of a thing that had been so negligible to Jack at the time.  It was Dr. Bennington’s first question in Jack’s living-room; a question so carelessly put and so dissociated from the object of his visit!  Jack remembered Dr. Bennington’s curious glance through his eyebrows as he asked him if he had met John Prather.  And Dr. Bennington had brought Jack into the world!  He knew the family history!  The Jack that now rose from the chair was a Jack of action, driven by the scourge of John Prather’s smile into obsession with the one idea which was crying:  “I will know!  I will know!”

Downstairs in the hall he learned over the telephone that Dr. Bennington had just gone out on a call.  It would be possible to see him yet to-night!  An hour later, as the doctor entered his reception-room he was startled by a pacing figure in the throes of impatience, who turned on him without formality in an outburst: 

“Dr. Bennington, you asked me in Little Rivers if I had ever met John Prather.  I have met him!  Who is he?  What is he to me?”

The doctor’s suavity was thrown off its balance, but he did not lose his presence of mind.  He was too old a hand at his profession, too capable, for that.

“I refuse to answer!” he said quickly and decisively.

“Then you do know!” Jack took a step toward the doctor.  His weight was on the ball of his foot; his eyes had the fire of a command that was not to be resisted.

“Heavens!  How like the ancestor!” the doctor exclaimed involuntarily.

“Then you do know!  Who is he?  What is he to me?”

It seemed as if the ceiling were about to crack.  The doctor looked away to avoid the bore of Jack’s unrelenting scrutiny.  He took a turn up and down, rapidly, nervously, his fingers pressed in against the palms and the muscles of his forearms moving in the way of one who is trying to hold himself in control by an outward expression of force against inward rebellion.

“I dined with your father to-night!” he exclaimed.  “I counseled him to tell you the truth!  I said that if he did not want to tell it for its own sake, as policy it was the only thing to you!  I—­I—­” he stopped, facing Jack with a sort of grisly defiance.  “Jack, a doctor is a confessor of men!  He keeps their secrets!  Good-night!” And he strode through the office door, which he closed behind him sharply, in reminder that the interview was at an end.

As Jack went down the steps into the night, the face of John Prather, with a satirical turn to the lips, was preceding him.  Now he walked madly up and down and back and forth across town to the river fronts, with panting energy of stride, as he fastened the leash of will on quivering nerves.  When dawn came it was the dawn of the desert calling to a brain that had fought its way to a lucid purpose.  It started him to the store in the fervor of a grateful mission, while a familiar greeting kept repeating itself in his ears on the way: