It was dark when Rose reached home. She had walked rapidly, mechanically taking familiar turns, cresting¹ the long slope of the hill at a panting speed, rounding corners where gushes² of light revealed her as a dark, flitting figure hurrying by almost at a run.  
She was as oblivious³ to her surroundings as Berny, left motionless on the park bench. Never before in her life had anything like this touched her. Such few troubles as she had known had been those of a sheltered domestic life—the life of a cherished child whose dainty self-respect had never been blurred⁴ by a coarse breath. Now had come this horrible revelation. It shook the pretty world she had lived in like an earthquake. Idols⁵ lay broken in the dust. She had often seen her father rough and brutal⁶ as he was to Gene⁷, but that was a different thing to her father’s buying that wretched woman’s husband, buying him for her. Berny’s face rose upon the darkness with its pitiful assumption of jaunty⁸ bravado⁹, its[414] mean shrewishness under the coating of powder and rouge¹⁰.
 
“How could they do it?” the girl panted to herself. “How could they ever do such a thing?”
 
She did not suspect Dominick. She could not have believed he was party to such an action unless he had told her so with his own lips. As she hurried on the thought that this was the woman he had bound himself to for the rest of his life mingled¹¹ with the other more poignantly-hateful thoughts, with a last sickening sense of wretchedness. The sudden, aghast consciousness of chaos¹², of an abrupt¹³ demolishing¹⁴ of the pleasant, familiar settings of a life that never comes to some, came to Rose that evening as she ran home through the fog.
 
She entered the house noiselessly and sped up to her room. It was time to dress for dinner, and an old woman-servant who had once been her nurse was waiting to help her. The mistress and maid were on terms of affectionate intimacy¹⁵ and the progress of the toilet was generally enlivened by gossip and laughter. To-night the girl was singularly silent, responding with monosyllables and sometimes not at all to the remarks of her assistant. As the woman drew the fastenings of the dress together, she could feel that the body the gown clipped so closely quivered, like the casing of machinery¹⁶, vibrating to powerful concussions¹⁷ within.
 
[415]The silence that continued to hold her throughout dinner passed unnoticed, as Gene was there and enlivened the passage of the meal by contributing an almost unbroken stream of talk. The night before he had been to a play, the plot of which, and its development in four acts, he now related with a fullness of detail which testified to the closeness of his attention and the accuracy of his memory. As each course was removed from the table, and the young man could once more give his undivided attention to the matter of discourse¹⁸, he leaned back in his chair and took up the dropped thread with a fresh zest¹⁹ and some such remarks as:
 
“In the beginning of the next act, the hero comes in with his hat on, and first he says”—and so on.
 
With each of these renewals²⁰ of the narrative²¹ the Bonanza²² King subsided²³ against his chair-back in a limp attitude, staring with gloomy fixity at his boy, and expelling his breath in a long audible rush of air, which was sometimes a sigh and sometimes approached the proportions of a groan²⁴.
 
At the end of dinner, when Gene announced his intention of leaving as he was to attend a vaudeville²⁵ performance, the old man began to show signs of reviving animation²⁶, going so far as politely to ask his son where he was going and with whom. His manner was marked by a warm, hearty²⁷ encouragement, as he said,
 
[416]“Get the whole vaudeville program down by heart, Gene, and you can tell it to us to-morrow night. There’ll be about twelve parts to it, and Rose can order two extra courses for dinner, and we might hire some men with stringed instruments for an accompaniment.”
 
Gene, with innocent good-humor, responded gaily²⁸.
 
“All right, father, I’ll give it my best attention, and if there’s anything especially good, I’ll report to you. You and Rose might like to go some night.”
 
His father, disappointed that his shaft²⁹ had made no impression upon the young man’s invulnerable amiability³⁰, emitted a scornful snort, and made no further response to Gene’s cheery “Good night.”
 
“There,” he said, in tones expressing his relief, as the portière dropped behind his son’s departing figure, “he’s gone! Now, Rosey, you and I can have a talk.”
 
“Yes,” said his daughter, looking at her coffee-cup, “that’s what I wanted. I want to have a long talk with you to-night, papa.”
 
“Fire away,” said the old man. “I’ve had to listen to that fool for an hour, and it’s broken my spirit. You can say anything you like.”
 
“Not here,” said his daughter; “in the sitting-room³¹. I’ll go in there and wait for you.”
 
“Why not here? What’s the matter with here?[417] I like it better than the sitting-room. I’m more comfortable.”
 
“No, the servants will want to clear the things away, and I don’t want them to hear what I say.”
 
“Tell the servants to go to hell,” said the old man, who, relieved by Gene’s departure, was becoming more cheerful.
 
“No, this is something—something serious. I’ll go into the sitting-room and wait for you. When you’ve finished your coffee, come in.”
 
She rose from her chair and walked to the door. He noticed that she was unusually unsmiling and it occurred to him that she had been so all through dinner.
 
“What is it, honey,” he said, extending his hand toward her, “short on your allowance?”
 
“Oh, no, it’s just—just something,” she said, lifting the portière. “Come when you’re ready, I’ll be there.”
 
She walked up the hall to the sitting-room and there sat down in a low chair before the chimneypiece. The chill of the fog had penetrated³² the house and a fire had been kindled³³ in the grate. On its quivering fluctuation³⁴ of flame she fixed³⁵ her eyes. With her hands pressed between her knees she sat immovable, thinking of what she was going to say, and so nervous that the blood sang in her ears and the palms of her hands, clasped tight together, were damp. She had never in her life shrunk so before an allotted³⁶ task. It sickened[418] her and she was determined³⁷ to do it, to thresh it out to the end. When she heard her father’s step in the passage her heart began to beat like a woman’s waiting for her lover. She straightened herself and drew an inspiration from the bottom of her lungs to try to give herself breath wherewith to speak.
 
The old man flung himself into an arm-chair at one side of the fireplace, jerked a small table to his elbow, reached creakingly for an ash tray, and, having made himself comfortable, took his cigar from his mouth and said,
 
“Well, let’s hear about this serious matter that’s making you look like a tragedy queen.”
 
“It is serious,” she said slowly. “It’s something that you won’t like to hear about.”
 
“Hit me with it,” he said, wondering a little what it could be. “Gene’s gone and a child could eat out of my hand now.”
 
Looking into the fire, Rose said,
 
“I was out walking this afternoon and down in the union Street plaza³⁸ a woman stopped me. I’d never seen her before. She was Mrs. Dominick Ryan.”
 
The old man’s face became a study. A certain whimsical tenderness that was generally in it when he spoke³⁹ to his daughter vanished as if by magic. It was as if a light had gone out. He continued to look at her with something of blankness in his countenance⁴⁰, as if, for the first[419] moment of shock, every faculty⁴¹ was held in suspense⁴², waiting for the next words. He held his cigar, nipped between a pair of stumpy fingers, out away from him over the arm of the chair.
 
“Well,” he said quietly, “and what had she to say to you?”
 
“The most disagreeable things I think any one ever said to me in my life. If they’re true, they’re just too dreadful——” she stopped, balking⁴³ from the final disclosure.
 
“Suppose you tell me what they were?” he said with the same almost hushed quietness.
 
“She said that you and Mrs. Ryan were offering her money—a good deal of money, three hundred thousand dollars was the amount, I think—to leave her husband so that he could get a divorce from her, and then—” she swallowed as if to swallow down this last unbearable⁴⁴ indignity,—“and then be free to marry me.”
 
So Berny had told all. If deep, unspoken curses could have killed her, she would have died that moment.
 
“Is it true?” Rose asked.
 
“Well, yes,” said the old man in a perfectly⁴⁵ natural tone of dubious⁴⁶ consideration, “it’s a fairly accurate statement.”
 
“Oh, papa,” cried his daughter, “how could you have done it? How could you have done such a thing? Such a hateful, horrible thing.”
 
[420]“Horrible thing?” he repeated with an air of almost naïve astonishment⁴⁷. “What’s horrible about it?”
 
“You know. I don’t have to tell you; you know. Don’t say to me that you don’t think it’s horrible. Don’t make me feel as if we were suddenly thousands of miles apart.”
 
The Bonanza King knew that in many matters, in most matters involving questions of ethics⁴⁸, they were more thousands of miles apart than she even now suspected. That was one of the reasons why he would have liked to kill Berny, who, for the first time, had brought this dissimilarity in their points of view to his daughter’s unwilling⁴⁹ consideration. He spoke slowly and vaguely⁵⁰ to gain time. He knew it was a critical moment in the relations between himself and the one creature in the world he loved.
 
“I don’t want you to feel that way, dearie,” he said easily. “Maybe there are things in this matter you don’t know about or understand. And, anyway, what’s there so horrible in trying to separate a man and woman who are unhappily married and can’t bear the sight of each other?”
 
“You were separating them for me,” she said in a low voice.
 
“Well, now,” he answered with a slight rocking movement of his shoulders and a manner of almost bluff⁵¹ deprecation, “I can say that I wasn’t, but suppose I was?”
 
[421]She paid no attention to the last part of the sentence, and replied,
 
“The woman said you were.”
 
He did not answer for a minute, the truth being that he did not know what it was best to say, and wanted to wait and let her make statements that he could either contradict or seek to justify⁵².
 
“What made you think I wanted to marry Dominick Ryan?” she said slowly, her eyes on the fire.
 
This was a question that went to the core of the subject. He knew now that he could not put her off, or slip from the responsibilities of the occasion. Drawing himself to the edge of his chair, he leaned forward and spoke with a sincerity⁵³ and feeling that made his words very impressive.
 
“One evening when I was at Antelope⁵⁴, I came into the sitting-room and saw my daughter in the arms of Dominick Ryan. I knew that my girl wasn’t the woman to let a man do that unless she loved him. That was how I came to know.”
 
“Oh,” said Rose in a faint tone.
 
“Afterward I heard from Dominick of what his marriage was. I heard from his mother, too. Then I saw his wife and I got a better idea from her what it was than I did from either of the others. That fellow, the man my daughter cared for, was tied up in a marriage that was hell. He[422] was bound to a woman who could only be managed with a club, and Dominick was not the kind that uses a club to a woman. What liking⁵⁵ he’d had for her was gone. She stuck to him like a barnacle because she wanted to get money, was ready to hang on, feet and hands, till Delia Ryan was dead and then put up a claim for a share of the estate. Do you think a man’s doing such a horrible thing to break up a marriage like that?”
 
“Yes,” said Rose, “I do. It was a marriage. They’d taken each other for better or for worse. They’d made the most solemn promises to each other. Neither you nor any one else had a right to interfere⁵⁶.”
 
She spoke with a hard determination, with something of an inflexible57

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