Carnac laughed. "Father was always a blizzard, wasn't he? Now here, now
there, he rushed about making money, humping up his business, and yet why
shouldn't you have ranged beside him. I don't understand."

"No, that's the bane of life," she replied. "We don't understand each
other. I can't understand why you don't marry Junia. You love her.
You don't understand why I couldn't play as big a part as your father--
I couldn't. He was always odd--masterful and odd, and I never could do
just as he liked."

There was yearning sadness in her eyes. "Dear Carnac, John Grier is a
whirlwind, but he's also a still pool in which currents are secretly
twisting, turning. His imagination, his power is enormous; but he's
Oriental, a barbarian."

"You mean he might have had twenty wives?"

"He might have had twenty, and he'd have been the same to all of them,
because they play no part, except to make his home a place where his body
can live. That's the kind of thing, when a wife finds it out, that
either kills her slowly, or drives her mad."

"It didn't kill you, mother," remarked Carnac with a little laugh.

"No, it didn't kill me."

"And it didn't drive you mad," he continued.

She looked at him with burning intensity. "Oh, yes, it did--but I became