Part 12 (2/2)

”You allowed Norman to drift into any crazy theory that might strike his fancy. And the moment he fails to agree with your views you turn like a madman and drive him into the streets.”

”He went of his own accord. I gave him his choice.”

”And I admire his pluck. It was a manly thing to do.”

”It was the act of a fool.”

”Yet, you know, Guardie, in your heart of hearts you admire him for it. He showed you that he was made of the same stuff as his father.”

The Colonel scowled, and the girl took courage.

”I'm going to meet him this evening----”

”I forbid it!”

”You can't help it,” she cried, as the tears slowly gathered. ”I'm going to tell him you wish to see and talk with him again.”

”On one condition only--his absolute obedience to my wishes.”

”I love him all the more for defying you--love him better than I ever did in my life. And--and, Guardie--I don't love you any more. You are cruel and unjust.”

With a sob she turned and left the room.

CHAPTER IX

A FADED PICTURE

Elena's tears had shaken the Colonel's confidence in his position as nothing else could possibly have done. Since she had finished her course in college two years before, and he had come in daily contact with her strong personality, a most intimate and perfect sympathy had grown between them. He had never before known her intuitive judgment to be wrong. Her impressions of character especially he had found singularly accurate, her sense of right and her good taste nearly perfect.

He retired to his room at night with a deep sense of uneasiness. His anger had cooled, and in its stead a feeling of depression slowly settled. From every nook and corner came memories of the boy he had driven from his door. His pictures hung on the walls and stared at him from every piece of furniture on which a frame could be placed. He had learned photography as a pastime years before the kodak was invented, and most of the pictures he had taken himself.

One photograph in particular, which stood by the clock on the mantel, set in a heavy frame of hammered gold, which he had made himself from the product of his first mine, riveted and held his attention. His first impulse was to tear these pictures all down and throw them in the fire. He had picked this one up first, to carry out his furious impulse, but something held his hand and he placed it back in its old place with the grim exclamation:

”No! It's the act of a coward. I've got to live with my memories--or surrender at once.”

Again and again his eye came back to this picture. He had taken it twenty-three years ago in a little bedroom in a dirty hotel of a desolate, G.o.d-forsaken mining town in Nevada. How well he remembered it! He was poor then, and had just begun the first big fight of his life for wealth and power. The boy was four weeks old, and he had insisted on taking the picture of the mother with the baby in her arms. He had carefully posed her, standing by the window looking down into the child's upturned face. It had turned out a remarkable likeness of both--the young mother's face wreathed in smiles, tender and frail and happy, with the great joy of the dawn of motherhood s.h.i.+ning in her eyes.

He looked at it long and tenderly. And, as a thousand memories of life crowded his soul, he suddenly exclaimed:

”G.o.d in heaven! What does she say to-day if she knows what I've done?”

His eyes blinked, and the tears blinded them.

He kissed the picture and buried his face in his hands as a sob of anguish shook his frame.

”The girl's right. My boy's my boy after all. I'm wrong!”

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