“So he isn’t her father?”

“No, he isn’t her father.  He had never seen her mother; he did not even know her name, for he met the woman by accident when she was arrested in the circus.  Patty was over two years old then—­about two and a half, I think.  Gideon Vetch took the child because of an impulse—­a very human impulse of pity—­but he knew nothing of her parentage.  He knows nothing now, not even her real name.  It is much worse than we ever imagined.  Try to understand it.  Try to take it in clearly before you act rashly.  There is still time to weigh things—­to stop and reflect.  Nothing whatever is known of Patty’s birth, except that her father, so the woman said, died in the first year of their marriage, before the child was born, and less than two years later the mother was sent to prison for killing another man—­”

She broke off hurriedly, wiping her lips as if the mere recital of the sordid facts had stained them with blood.  It all sounded so horrible as she repeated it—­so incredibly evil!

“Oh, my dear boy, try to take it in however much it may hurt you,” she pleaded, turning a coward not on her own account, not even on his, but for the sake of something deeper and more sacred which belonged to them both and to the tradition for which they stood.  A passionate longing seized her now to protect Stephen from the risk that she had urged him to take.

“I understand.  It is terrible for her,” he answered.

“I hate you to see Patty.  Poor child, she looks seared.”  Then a possible way occurred to her, even though she hated herself while she suggested it.  “I am not sure that it is wise for you to wait.  There are so many things you must think of.  There is first of all your family—­”

He laughed shortly.  “It is late in the day to remember that.”

“I know.”  A look of compunction crossed her face.  “Forgive me.”

“Of course I think of them,” he said presently.  “Poor Dad.  He is the best of us all, I believe.”  Though there was an expression of pain in his eyes, she noticed that the unnatural lethargy, the nervous irritation, had disappeared.  He looked as if a load had dropped from his shoulders.

As with many women who have reconciled themselves to the weakness of a man, the first sign of his strength was more than a surprise, it was almost a shock to her.  She had believed that her knowledge of him was perfect; yet she saw now that there had been a single flaw in her analysis, and that this flaw was the result of a fundamental misconception of his character.  For she had forgotten that, conservative and apparently priggish as he was, he was before all things a romantic in temperament; and the true romantic will shrink from the ordinary risk while he accepts the extraordinary one.  She had forgotten that men of Stephen’s nature are incapable of small sacrifices, and yet at the same time capable of large ones; that, though they may not endure petty discomforts with fortitude, they are able, in moments of vivid experience, to perform acts of conspicuous and splendid nobility.  For the old order was not merely the outward form of the conservative principle, it was also the fruit of heroic tradition.