“I’ve been studying hard.  It gave me something to do.”

“Darn it all, why couldn’t you and Hilda have taken to each other!...”  Lightener stopped, and stared at his desk.  Perhaps it was not too late yet.  Bonbright’s marriage had been no success; Bonbright was young; and it was not thinkable that he would not recover from that wound in time to marry again.  Of course he would. ...  Then why should he not marry Hilda?  Not the least reason in the world.  In the affair Bonbright was guiltless—­merely unfortunate.  The thing was worth bearing in mind.  Perhaps something might be done; at any rate, he would talk it over with his wife.

“I want you to put in another six months learning this business,” he said.  “If you pan out I’ll have a job for you. ...  I haven’t heard of your falling down any place yet. ...  Know what I told your father?  He said the Foote family ended with him—­became extinct.  Well, I said the family just started with you, and that one generation of your kind was worth the whole six of his.  And I hoped he lived to see it.”

“Somehow I can’t feel very hard toward father, Mr. Lightener.  Sometimes I’m—­sorry for him.  To him it’s as bad as if I’d been born with a hunchback.  Worse, maybe, because, hunchback and all, I might have been the sort he wanted. ...  He doesn’t understand, that’s it.  I can understand him—­so I don’t have any hard feelings-except on her account. ...  He said the family was extinct?”

“Yes.”

“I guess it is,” said Bonbright.  “The family, as he thought of it, meant something that went on and on as he and his ancestors went. ...  Yes, it’s extinct.  I don’t know why I was different from them, but I was.  Always.  I’m glad.”

“He must be worth five millions, anyhow, maybe more.”

“I don’t know,” said Bonbright.

“You won’t get a cent of it, from what he says.”

“I suppose not. ...  No, I won’t get a cent.”

“You don’t make much fuss about it.”

“I had that out with myself six months ago.  It was hard to give it up. ...  Nobody wants to be poor when he can be rich.  If it hadn’t been for Ruth I suppose I should have been there yet—­pretty well made over to fit by this time.”

As Bonbright and Malcolm Lightener talked, Mr. Foote sat in his office, his head upon his desk, one arm stretched out across the blotter, the other shielding his face.  He did not move. ...

After Malcolm Lightener left the room he had sat for a time staring at the door.  He did not feel well.  He was troubled.  None but himself knew how deep was his disappointment, his bitterness, because of his son’s failure to stand true to his type.  It was not the grief of a father at the loss of a son; it was the suffering of a man whose supreme motive is the carrying on of family and of family traditions.  He had just told Lightener the family became extinct with his passing.  Now he reaffirmed it, and, reaffirming it, he felt the agony of ultimate affliction.