A boy to train, to educate, a mental companionship such as he loved to fancy he would have found in a young, eager mind, had since his marriage become the one burning desire of his heart, and even to-night sitting, as he so often did, alone in his house, his thoughts dwelt with a playful tenderness upon the boy who might have brought his _Caesar_ to his footstool.

He was a man of instinctive moral cleanness, and even in his imagination he had always kept the riotous senses severely in the check of reason.

In the domain of the affections he had wanted nothing desperately, he told himself, except his child; and so intense had this yearning of fatherhood become in him that there were moments of bitter loneliness when he seemed almost to feel the touch of the boy's hand upon his knee.

He had strange hours, even when his dream became more vivid to him than the pressing reality of events.
The clicking of the latchkey as it was put into the lock aroused him presently, and immediately afterward he heard the closing of the outer door, a brief "Good-night!" in Connie's high-pitched voice, and her rapid steps as they crossed the carpet in the hall.

While he waited, hesitating to follow her upstairs, his door opened and shut quickly, and she came in and threw herself into a chair beside the lamp.