“Thank you.  That is very kind, Mr. Wingfield!” Mortimer returned, so politely, even exultantly, that his aspect seemed treasonable.

John Wingfield, Sr. tried to concentrate his attention on some long and important letters that had been left on his desk for further consideration; but his mind refused to stick to the lines of typewriting.

“This one is a little complicated,” he thought, “I will lay it aside.”

He tried the second and the third letters, with no better results.  A tanned face and a pair of broad shoulders kept appearing between him and the paper.  Again he was thinking of Jack, as he had all night, to the exclusion of everything else.  Unquestionably, this son had a lot of magnetic force in him; he had command of men.  Why, he had won fifty of the best employees out of sheer sentiment to follow him out to the desert, when they had no idea what they were in for!

His gaze fell and rested for some time on the bunch of roses on his desk.  Every morning there had been a fresh bunch, in keeping with the custom that Jack had established.  The father had become so used to their presence that he was unconscious of it.  For all the pleasure he got out of them, they might as well have been in the cornucopia vase in the limousine.  His hand went out spasmodically toward the roses, as if he would crush them; crush this symbol of the thing drawn from the mother that had invaded the calm autocracy of his existence.  The velvety richness of the petals leaning toward him above the drooping grace of their stems made him pause in realization of the absurdity of his anger.  A feeling to which he had been a stranger swept over him.  It was like a breaking instinct of dependableness; and then he called up Dr. Bennington.

“Well, he has gone!” he told the doctor, desperately.

“You did not tell him the truth!” came the answer; and he noted that the doctor’s voice was without its usual suavity.  It was as matter-of-fact to the man of millions as if it had been advising an operation in a dispensary case.

“No, not exactly,” John Wingfield, Sr. confessed.

“I told you what his nature was; how it had drawn on the temperament of his mother.  I told you that with candor, with a decently human humility appealing to his affections, everything was possible.  And remember, he is strong, stronger than you, John Wingfield!  There’s a process of fate in him!  John Wingfield, you—­” The sentence ended abruptly, as if the doctor had dropped the receiver on the hooks with a crash.

Phantoms were closing in around John Wingfield, Sr....  His memory ranged back over the days of ardent youth, in the full tide of growing success, when to want a thing, human or material, meant to have it....  And in his time he had told a good many lies.  The right lie, big and daring, at the right moment had won more than one victory.  With John Prather out of the way, he had decided on an outright falsehood to his son.  Why had he not compromised with Dr. Bennington’s advice and tried part falsehood and part contrition?  But no matter, no matter.  He would go on; he was made of steel.