is bred in the bone must tell, and that I was a fool again—­a pitiful fond fool?  I could not trust her.  I can never trust any woman or child again, and least of all that woman’s child.  She is as dead to me as though she were buried with her mother, and it is nothing to me what she is or what her life is.  I know in time what it will be.  She has begun earlier than I had supposed, that is all; but she is nothing to me.”  The man stopped and turned his back to Van Bibber, and hid his head in his hands, with his elbows on the mantel-piece.  “I care too much,” he said.  “I cannot let it mean anything to me; when I do care, it means so much more to me than to other men.  They may pretend to laugh and to forget and to outgrow it, but it is not so with me.  It means too much.”  He took a quick stride towards one of the arm-chairs, and threw himself into it.  “Why, man,” he cried, “I loved that child’s mother to the day of her death.  I loved that woman then, and, God help me!  I love that woman still.”

He covered his face with his hands, and sat leaning forward and breathing heavily as he rocked himself to and fro.  Van Bibber still stood looking gravely out at the lights that picketed the black surface of the city.  He was to all appearances as unmoved by the outburst of feeling into which the older man had been surprised as though it had been something in a play.  There was an unbroken silence for a moment, and then it was Van Bibber who was the first to speak.

“I came here, as you say, on impulse,” he said; “but I am glad I came, for I have your decisive answer now about the little girl.  I have been thinking,” he continued, slowly, “since you have been speaking, and before, when I first saw her dancing in front of the footlights, when I did not know who she was, that I could give up a horse or two, if necessary, and support this child instead.  Children are worth more than horses, and a man who saves a soul, as it says”—­he flushed slightly, and looked up with a hesitating, deprecatory smile—­“somewhere, wipes out a multitude of sins.  And it may be I’d like to try and get rid of some of mine.  I know just where to send her; I know the very place.  It’s down in Evergreen Bay, on Long Island.  They are tenants of mine there, and very nice farm sort of people, who will be very good to her.  They wouldn’t know anything about her, and she’d forget what little she knows of this present life very soon, and grow up with the other children to be one of them; and then, when she gets older and becomes a young lady, she could go to some school—­but that’s a bit too far ahead to plan for the present; but that’s what I am going to do, though,” said the young man, confidently, and as though speaking to himself.  “That theatrical boarding-house person could be bought off easily enough,” he went on, quickly, “and Lester won’t mind letting her go if I ask it, and—­and that’s what I’ll do.  As you say, it’s a good deal of an experiment, but I think I’ll run the risk.”