“Why did He do this to me, if He’s what you say He is?”

“I’m not sure that He did, old man!  I think perhaps you and I had a hand in it!”

Tennelly looked at him keenly for an instant and turned away, silent.  “I know what you mean,” he said.  “You told me I’d go through hell, and I have.  I knew it in a way myself, but I’m afraid I’d do it again!  I loved her!  God!  I’m afraid—­I love her yet!  Man!  You don’t know what an ache such love is.”

“Yes, I do,” said Courtland, with a sudden light in his face, but Tennelly was not heeding him.

“It isn’t entirely that I’ve lost her; that I’ve got to give up hoping that she’ll some time care and settle down to knowing she is gone forever!  It’s the way she went!  The—­the—­the disgrace!  The humiliation!  The awfulness of the way she went!  We’ve never had anything like that in our family.  And to think my baby has got to grow up to know that shame!  To know that her mother was a disgraceful woman!  That I gave her a mother like that!”

“Now, look here, Tennelly!  You didn’t know!  You thought she would be all right when you were married!”

“But I did know!” wailed Tennelly.  “I knew in my soul!  I think I knew when I first saw her, and that was why I worried about you when you used to go and see her.  I knew she wasn’t the woman for you.  But, blamed fool that I was!  I thought I was more of a man of the world, and would be able to hold her!  No, I didn’t, either, for I knew it was like trying to enjoy a sound sleep in a powder-magazine with a pocketful of matches, to trust my love to her!  But I did it, anyway!  I dared trouble!  And my little child has got to suffer for it!”

“Your little child will perhaps be better for it!”

“I can’t see it that way!”

“You don’t have to.  If God does, isn’t that enough?”

“I don’t know!  I can’t see God now; it’s too dark!” Tennelly put his forehead against the window-pane and groaned.

“But you have your little child,” said Courtland, hesitating.  “Isn’t that something to help?”

“She breaks my heart,” said the father.  “To think of her worse than motherless!  That little bit of a helpless thing!  And it’s my fault that she’s here with a future of shame!”

“Nothing of the sort!  It’ll be your fault if she has a future of shame, but it’s up to you.  Her mother’s shame can’t hurt her if you bring her up right.  It’s your job, and you can get a lot of comfort out of it if you try!”

“I don’t see how,” dully.

“Listen, Tennelly.  Does she look like her mother?”

Tennelly’s sensitive face quivered with pain.  “Yes,” he said, huskily.  “I’ll send for her and you can see.”  He rang a bell.  “I brought her and the nurse up to town with me this morning.”

An elderly, kind-faced woman brought the baby in, laid it in a big chair where they could see it, and then withdrew.