Doris got up and linked her arm in David’s—­they paced the floor slowly, getting control of themselves as they went.  Presently Doris spoke: 

“You see, dear, I have always held certain beliefs—­I have always been willing to test them—­and pay.”

“But dare you let Joan pay?” Martin was calm now.

“Not for mine, but for her own—­yes.  Aren’t you going to let this boy of yours try his own flight, David?”

“That’s different.”

“It won’t be always, David, dear—­someone must make the break—­our dear young things in the big cities are breasting the waves, David.  I glory in them, and even while I tremble, I urge them on.  You should have seen Joan when she came to me with her great desire burning and throbbing.  Why, it would have been murder to kill in her what I saw in her eyes then.  It was her Right demanding to be free.”

“It’s the maddest thing I ever heard of!” Martin broke in.  “I wonder if you have counted the cost, Doris?”

“Yes, David, through many long days and wakeful nights.  I have shuddered and felt that it was different for Joan; that she should have been kept in—­in bondage.  It would have been bondage for her.  But, David, the only thing I dared not do was to keep freedom from the child.”

“And suppose”—­Martin’s face grew grimmer—­“suppose she goes under?”

“She will come to me—­she promised.  I am prepared to go as far as I can with my girls on their way; not mine.  That was part of my bargain with God when I took them.”

“You’re a very strange and risky woman, Doris.”

“And you are going to be fair, David, dear.  Now tell me about your boy.”

Instantly Martin was taken off guard.  He smiled broadly and patted Doris’s hand, which lay upon his arm.

“Bud’s coming out on top!” he said—­Clive Cameron was always Bud to Martin.  “I’ve kept closemouthed about the boy,” he went on, forgetting Joan; “he’s meant a lot to me, but I’ve always recognized the possibility of failure with him and felt the least I could do, if things came to the worst, was to leave an exit for him to slip out of, unnoticed.  He’s always kept us guessing—­my sister and I. He never knew his father.  From a silent, observing child he ran into a stormy, vivid youth that often threatened disaster if not positive annihilation—­but he’s of the breed that dashes to the edge, grinds his teeth, plants his feet, and looks over!—­then, breathing hard, draws back.  After a while I got to banking on that balking trick of his.  Once I got used to the fact that the boy meant to know life—­not abuse it—­I knew a few easy years while he plodded or, at times, plunged, through college.

“He couldn’t settle, though, on a job, and that upset us at last.  He ran the gamut of professions in his mind—­but none of them appealed to him.  When he was nineteen he suddenly took an interest in his father—­we’d never told him much about him.  Cameron wasn’t a bad chap—­he simply hadn’t character enough to be bad—­he was a floater!  When Bud got that into his system, it sobered him more than if he’d been told his father was a scamp.  A year later the boy came to me and said:  ’Uncle David, if you don’t think I’d queer your profession—­I’m going to make a try at it.’”