"And yet I feel so guilty--so very guilty, when there is so much sickness about town this wretched weather," she continued.

Again he smiled--this time in his best professional manner, in the midst of which he shook hands with Margaret and Thayor. Then he added in a voice as if he had not slept for months--

"Yes, there is a lot of grippe about."

Thayor looked at him from under lowered lids.

"I wonder you could have left these poor people," he said sententiously.

Alice, scenting danger, stretched forth one white hand and touched the doctor's wrist.

"You came because I couldn't do without you, didn't you, dear doctor?"

Again the portiere opened.

"Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Van Rock--Mr. Kennedy Jones--Miss Trevor,"

announced Blakeman successively.

Mrs. Thayor's fourth dinner party that week had begun.

As the door closed at midnight upon the last guest, Margaret kissed her father and mother good-night and hurried to her room, leaving the two alone. The dinner had been an ordeal to her--never before had she seen her father so absorbed.

"You were very brilliant to-night, were you not?" exclaimed Alice as soon as she and Thayor were alone.

Thayor continued silent, gazing into the library fire, his hands clenched deep in his trousers pockets, his shoulders squared.

"A beautiful dinner," she continued, her voice rising--"the best I have had this season, and yet you sat there like a log."

The man turned sharply--so sharply that the woman at his side gave a start.

"Sit down!" he commanded--"over there where I can see you. I have something to say."

She looked at him in amazement. The determined ring in his voice made her half afraid. What had he to say?

"What do you mean?" she retorted.

"Just what I said. Sit down!"

The fair shoulders shrugged. She was accustomed to these outbursts, but not to this ring in his voice.

"Go on--what is it?"

Thayor crossed the room, shut the door and turned the key in the lock.

She watched him in silence as he switched off the electric lights along the bookcases, until naught illumined the still library but the soft glow of the lamp and the desultory flare from the hearth.

Still he did not speak. Finally the storm broke.

"What I have to say to you is this: I'm sick of this wholesale giving of dinners."

Alice let go her breath. After all, it was not what was uppermost in her mind.

"Ah! So that's it," she returned.

"That's a part of it," he cried, "but not all."

"And the other part?" she asked, her nervousness returning.

"I'll come to that later," said her husband, with an accent on the last word. "It is necessary that I should begin at the beginning."

"Go on," she murmured nervously, gazing absently into the fire, her mind at work, her fears suddenly aroused. For the first time its wavering light seemed restful. "Go on--I'm listening."

"The first part is that I'm sick of these dinners. I've told you so before, and yet you had the impertinence to-night to give another and not say a word to me about it." The voice had a cold, incisive note in it--the touch of steel to warm flesh.

"Impertinence! Your ideas of hospitality, Sam, are peculiar." Any topic was better than the one she feared.

"Hospitality!" he retorted hotly. "Do you call it hospitality to squander my money on the cheap spongers you are continually inviting here? Do you call it hospitable to force me to sit up and entertain this riff-raff night after night, and then be dragged off to the opera or theatre when I am played out after a hard day's work down town for the money you spend? And just look at Margaret! Do you suppose that these people, this sort of life you daily surround her with, is a sane atmosphere in which to bring up our daughter? That's the first thing I've got to say to you, and I want to tell you right here that it's got to stop."

She looked up at him in a half frightened way, wondering whether there was not something back of this sudden tirade, something she could not fathom--something she feared to fathom.

"The second thing that I have to tell you is this: I am at the end of my rope, or will be if I keep on. A man can't keep up month in and month out, living my life, and not break down. I saw Leveridge yesterday and he wishes me to get some relief at once. Young Holcomb, who did me a service once at Long Lake, is here, and I am going back home with him. I intend to take a rest for a fortnight--possibly three weeks--in camp."

For an instant she could not speak--so quick came the joyful rebound.

Then there rushed over her what his absence might, or might not, mean to her.

"When do you start?" she asked with a.s.sumed condescension--her old way of concealing her thoughts.

"Sat.u.r.day night."

"But Sat.u.r.day night we are giving a dinner," she rejoined in a positive tone. This was one at which she wanted him present.

"You can give it, but without me," he replied doggedly.

"I tell you you'll do nothing of the sort, Sam. I'm not going to abide by the advice of that quack, Leveridge, nor shall you!" The old dominating tone rea.s.serted itself now that she had read his mind to the bottom.

"Quack or not, you would not be alive to-day but for him, and it is disgraceful for you to talk this way behind his back. And now I am going to bed." With this he turned off the remaining light, leaving only the flicker of the firelight behind, shot back the bolt and strode from the room.

As he pa.s.sed Margaret's door there came softly:

"Is that you, daddy?"

"Yes, dear."

"Come in, daddy, dear." Her clear young voice was confident and tender.

He stopped, pushed back the door and entered her dainty room. She lay propped up among the snowy whiteness of the pillows, smiling at him.

Like her mother, Margaret in her womanhood--she was eighteen--was well made; her figure being as firm and well knit as that of a boy. For an instant his eyes wandered over her simple gown of white mull, tied at the throat with the daintiest of pink ribbons, her well shaped ears and the wealth of auburn hair that sprang from the nape of her shapely neck and lay in an undulating ma.s.s of gold all over her pretty head.