“I have made things right for you and Barbara.  Roger Austin has my will, dividing everything I have between you.  I should like your share to go to Barbara, eventually, if you can see your way clear to do it.”

“Don’t!” cried Miriam, sharply.  The strain was insupportable.

“I do not wish to pain you, Sister,” answered the old man, with gentle dignity, “but sometimes it is necessary that these things be said.  I shall not speak of it again.  Will you give me back the check, please, and show me where to date it?  I shall date it to-morrow—­I cannot bear to write down this day.”

* * * * *

When Barbara came down, her father was sitting at the old square piano, quite alone, improvising music that was both beautiful and sad.  He seldom touched the instrument, but, when he did, wayfarers in the street paused to listen.

“Are you making a song, Father?” she asked, softly, when the last deep chord died away.

[Sidenote:  Too Sad for Songs]

“No,” he sighed; “I cannot make songs to-day.”

“There is always a song, Daddy,” she reminded him.  “You told me so yourself.”

“Yes, I know, but not to-day.  Do you know what to-day is, my dear?”

“The seventh—­the seventh of June.”

“Twenty-one years ago to-day,” he said, with an effort, “your dear mother took her own life.”  The last words were almost inaudible.

Barbara went to him and put her soft arms around his neck.  “Daddy!” she whispered, with infinite sympathy, “Daddy!”

He patted her arm gently, unable to speak.  She said no more, but the voice and the touch brought healing to his pain.  Bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, the daughter of the dead Constance was thrilled unspeakably with a tenderness that the other had never given him.

“Sit down, my dear,” said Ambrose North, slowly releasing her.  “I want to talk to you—­of her.  Did I hear Aunt Miriam go out?”

“Yes, just a few minutes ago.”

“You are almost twenty-two, are you not, Barbara?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Then you are a woman grown.  Your dear mother was twenty-two, when—­” He choked on the words.

“When she died,” whispered Barbara, her eyes luminous with tears.

[Sidenote:  A Torturing Doubt]

[Sidenote:  A Change]

“Yes, when she—­died.  I have never known why, Barbara, unless it was because I was blind and you were lame.  But all these years there has been a torturing doubt in my heart.  Before you were born, and after my blindness, I fancied that a change came over her.  She was still tender and loving, but it was not quite in the same way.  Sometimes I felt that she had ceased to love me.  Do you think my blindness could—?”

“Never, Father, never.”  Barbara’s voice rang out strong and clear.  “That would only have made her love you more.”

“Thank you, my dear.  Someway it comforts me to have you say it.  But, after you came, I felt the change even more keenly.  You have read in the books, doubtless, many times, that a child unites those who bring it into the world, but I have seen, quite as often, that it divides them by a gulf that is never bridged again.”