He knew the danger which lay in the last aid to deaden his pain, so he rarely sought it.

But something new had entered in—­something that, in hours when he was obliged to face facts, frightened him, and after months abroad, months in which he nursed his resentment against Meredith and felt his defeat with her, he decided to do the only decent thing left for him to do—­apologize and set her free.

And then he found her note.  The bald, naked statement drove all power to act for the moment from him.  Close upon that shock, which he smilingly covered, by explaining on very commonplace grounds, came Doris’s letter.  The purest elements and the most brutal in many natures lie close.  They did in Thornton.  Had Meredith been a wiser, a more human and loving woman, she might have helped Thornton to his full stature; but failing him by her helpless insufficiency, she drove him to his shoals.

Had she by the turn of Fortune been obliged, as many women are, to have borne her lot though her heart broke her child might have saved her and the man also—­for Thornton had the paternal instincts, though they were unsuspected and wholly dormant.

Again Meredith had defeated him.  What could he do with a helpless baby on his hands?  What else was there to do but accept Doris’s offer?  And of course the child was dead to him except by the cold, legal tie that bound them together.  That, Thornton grimly held to.

He would press it, too, in his good time!

But Thornton’s next few years proved to be a succession of mis-steps with the inevitable results.

He married the woman who could, when she had no actual hold on him, soothe and comfort—­not because of his need, but her own.  Once, however, she was placed in a secure position, she cast any need of his aside and developed myriads of her own.

If Thornton could not force a social position for her, then he must pay for the luxury of her exile with him.  Thornton paid and paid until every faculty he had was strained to the snapping point.  Finally he resorted to the last and most dangerous aid he had at his disposal—­he drank more than ever before; but even in his extremity he recognized his danger and always caught himself before the worst overcame him.

Business began to show the effect of private troubles, and then Thornton remembered the Fletcher fortune; his child, and the possibilities of making the child a link between money and a growing necessity.

Whatever natural tie there might have been in Thornton’s relations with his child had perished.  There was merely a legal one now.

And Thornton, having explained this at great length to his wife, and finally getting her to agree to assume a responsibility that he swore should never embarrass her, travelled to New York.

It was a bright, sunny June day when he rang the bell of the Fletcher home and was admitted, by a trim maid, to the small reception room that was a noncommittal link between the hall and the drawing room.