"And after the divorce--and she was free to go where she
pleased, and to live as she pleased and with whom she pleased,
without bringing disgrace on a husband who honestly loved her-
-I swore to my God that I would never see her nor her child
again. And I never saw her again, not even when she died. I
loved the mother, and she deceived me and disgraced me and
broke my heart, and I only wish she had killed me; and I was
beginning to love her child, and I vowed she should not live
to trick me too. I had suffered as no man I know had
suffered; in a way a boy like you cannot understand, and that
no one can understand who has not gone to hell and been forced
to live after it. And was I to go through that again? Was I
to love and care for and worship this child, and have her grow
up with all her mother's vanity and animal nature, and have
her turn on me some day and show me that what is bred in the
bone must tell, and that I was a fool again--a pitiful fond
fool? I could not trust her. I can never trust any woman or
child again, and least of all that woman's child. She is as
dead to me as though she were buried with her mother, and it
is nothing to me what she is or what her life is. I know in
time what it will be. She has begun earlier than I had
supposed, that is all; but she is nothing to me." The man
stopped and turned his back to Van Bibber, and hid his head in
his hands, with his elbows on the mantelpiece. "I care too
much," he said. "I cannot let it mean anything to me; when I
do care, it means so much more to me than to other men. They
may pretend to laugh and to forget and to outgrow it, but it
is not so with me. It means too much." He took a quick
stride towards one of the arm-chairs, and threw himself into