And then, with my hand outstretched, almost touching my father’s head, the revulsion came.

True, this man was my father, but he was also the man who had made my mother’s life one long tragedy.  All my life I had schooled myself to hate the man who had deserted my mother and me when I was four years old, who had added to the desertion the insult of taking with him the woman who had been my mother’s most intimate friend.  My love for my mother had been the absorbing emotion of my life, until she had left me, and because of that love I had loathed the very thought of the man who had caused her to suffer so terribly.

My father lifted his head and looked at me, and there was that in his eyes which made me shudder.  It was the look of a prisoner in the dock, waiting to receive a sentence.

“Of course, I know you must hate the very sight of me, Margaret,” he said brokenly.  “I had not meant to tell you so soon.  But I have to go away almost at once to South America, and it is very uncertain when I shall return.  I could not bear to go without your knowing how I have loved and longed for you.

“Never so great a sinner as I, my child,” the weary old voice went on, “but, oh, if you could know my bitter repentance, my years of loneliness.”

His voice tore at my heart strings, but I steeled myself against him.  One thing I must know.

“Where is the person with whom—­” I could not finish the words.

“I do not know.”  The words rang true.  I was sure he was not lying to me.  “I have not seen or heard of her in over twenty years.”

Then the association had not lasted.  I had a sudden clairvoyant glimpse into my father’s soul.  My mother had been the real love of his life.  His infatuation for the other woman had been but a temporary madness.  What long drawn out, agonized repentance must have been his for twenty years with wife, child and home lost to him!

I leaned back and closed my eyes for a minute, overwhelmed with the problem which confronted me.  And then—­call it hallucination or what you will—­I heard my mother’s voice, as clearly as I ever heard it in life, repeating the words I had read weeks before in the letter she had left for me at her death.

“Remember it is my last wish, Margaret, that if your father be living sometime you may be reconciled to him.”

I opened my eyes with a little cry of thanksgiving.  It was as if my mother had stretched out her hand from heaven to sanction the one thing I most longed to do.

“Father!” I gasped.  “Oh, my father, I have wanted you so.”

He uttered a little cry of joy, and then my father’s arms were around me, my face was close to his, and for the first time since I was a baby of four years I knew my father’s kisses.

A smothered sound, almost like a groan, startled me, and then the door slammed shut.

“What was that?” I asked.  “Is there any one there?”