"Oh, you think it isn't decent for me to speak that way of my father!
You can't think how it seems to me--how--how irreligious! But let me
save my soul, Honora! Let me do that!"

The girl's pallid face, sharpened and intensified, bore the imprint of
genuine misery. Honora Fulham, strong of nerve and quick of
understanding, embraced her with a full sisterly glance.

"I always liked and trusted you, Kate," she said. "I was sorry when our
ways parted, and I'd be happy to have them joined again. I see it's to
be a hazard of new fortune for you, and David and I will stand by. I
don't know, of course, precisely what that may mean, but we're yours
to command."

A key turned in the front door.

"There's David now," said his wife, her voice vibrating, and she
summoned him.

* * * * *

David Fulham entered with something almost like violence, although the
violence did not lie in his gestures. It was rather in the manner in
which his personality assailed those within the room. Dark, with an
attractive ugliness, arrogant, with restive and fathomless eyes, he
seemed to unite the East and the West in his being. Had his mother been
a Jewess of pride and intellect, and his father an adventurous American
of the superman type? Kate, looking at him with fresh interest, found
her thoughts leaping to the surmise. She knew that he was, in a way, a