“As they worked the brute down the arena, it caught sight of my white shirt, I suppose, for it made a dive at me, reared up, and smashed its forehoofs against the barrier.  By Jove, a regular maneater!  Brought my heart into my mouth to see the big devil raging, and I began to yearn to get astride him and to—­well, just fight to see which of us would come out on top.  You know?”

The big man moistened his lips; he was strangely excited.

“So you climbed into the arena and rode the horse?”

“Exactly!  I knew you’d understand!  After I’d ridden the horse to a standstill and climbed off, a good many people gathered around me.  One of them was a big man, about your size.  In fact, now that I look back at it, he was a good deal like you in more ways than one; looked as if time had hardened him without making him brittle.  He came to me and said:  ’Excuse me, son, but you look sort of familiar to me.  Mind telling me who your mother was?’ What could I answer to a—­”

A shadow fell across Anthony from the rising height of his father.  As he looked up he saw John Woodbury glance sharply, first toward the French windows and then at the door of the secret room.

“Was that all, Anthony?”

“Yes, about all.”

“I want to be alone.”

The habit of automatic obedience made Anthony rise in spite of the questions which were storming at his lips.

“Good-night, sir.”

“Good-night, my boy.”

At the door the harsh voice of his father overtook him.

“Before you leave the house again, see me, Anthony.”

“Yes, sir.”

He closed the door softly, as one deep in thought, and stood for a time without moving.  Because a man had asked him who his mother was, he was under orders not to leave the house.  While he stood, he heard a faint click of a snapping lock within the library and knew that John Woodbury had entered the secret room.

In his own bedroom he undressed slowly and afterward stood for a long time under the shower, rubbing himself down with the care of an athlete, thumbing the soreness of the wild ride out of the lean, sinewy muscles, for his was a made strength built up in the gymnasium and used on the wrestling mat, the cinder path, and the football field.  Drying himself with a rough towel that whipped the pink into his skin, he looked down over his corded, slender limbs, remembered the thick arms and Herculean torso of John Woodbury, and wondered.

He sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped in a bathrobe, and pondered.  Stroke by stroke he built the picture of that dead mother, like a painter who jots down the first sketch of a large composition.  John Woodbury, vast, blond, grey-eyed, had given him few of his physical traits.  But then he had often heard that the son usually resembled the mother.  She must have been dark, slender, a frail wife for such a giant; but perhaps she had a strength of spirit which made her his mate.