“It’s Bob’s baby and ours.”

He looked down at her queerly for a moment.  “The breed is rotten.  If he had married a decent girl—­”

“John Merkle says she is splendid.”

“How do you know?”

“I have talked with him.  I have learned whatever I could about her, wherever I could, and it’s all good.  After all, Bob loves her, and isn’t that enough?”

“But she doesn’t love him,” stormed the father.  “She said she didn’t.  She wants his money, and she thinks she’ll get it this way.”

“Do you think money can pay her for what she is enduring at this minute?  She’s frightened, just as I was frightened when Bob was born.  She’s sick and suffering.  But do you think all our dollars could buy that child from her?  Money has made us hard, Hannibal; let’s—­be different.”

“I’m afraid we have put it off too long,” he answered, slowly.  “She won’t forgive us, and I’m not sure I want her to.”

“Bob’s in trouble.  Won’t you go to him?”

Hannibal Wharton opened his lips, closed them; then, taking his hat and coat, he left the room.

But as the old man went up-town his nerve failed him.  He was fixed in his ways, he had a blind faith in his own infallibility.  Twice he rode up in the elevator to his son’s door, twice he rode down again.  The hall-man informed him that the crisis had not passed, so, finding the night air not uncomfortable, Hannibal settled himself to wait.  After all, he told himself, this was not the moment for a painful reconciliation.

As time dragged on he came to a reckoning with his conscience, and his meditations brought home the realization that despite his success, despite the love and companionship of his wife, he, too, was growing old and lonely.

During the chill, still hours after the city had gone to rest an automobile drew up to the apartment house; when its expected passenger emerged from the building a grim-faced stranger in a greatcoat accosted him.  One glance challenged the physician’s attention, and he answered: 

“Yes, it’s all over.  A boy.”

“And—­Mrs. Wharton, the mother?”

“Youth is a wonderful thing, and she has everything to live for.  She is doing as well as could be expected.  You’re a relative, I presume?”

The old man hesitated, then his voice came boldly “Yes, I’m her father.”

When the doctor had driven away Hannibal strode into the building and telephoned to the Waldorf, but now his words were short and oddly broken.  Nevertheless they brought a light of gladness to the eyes of the woman who had waited all these hours.

CHAPTER XXIX

Adoree Demorest, still in her glittering, hybrid costume, but heavy-limbed and dull with fatigue, paused outside her own door early that morning.  The time lacked perhaps an hour of dawn, the street outside and the building itself was silent, yet from Adoree’s parlor issued the sound of light fingers upon piano-keys.  Adoree entered, to find Campbell Pope, with collar loosened and hair on end, seated at the instrument.  The air within the room was blue and reeking with the odor of stale tobacco-smoke, and the ash-receiver at his elbow was piled high with burnt offerings, one of which was now sending an evil-smelling streamer toward the ceiling.