"No," Mr. Ritherdon answered. "I have not forgotten. Heaven help me! it has to be told. Yet--yet not now. Let us enjoy the first few hours together pleasantly. Do not ask to hear it now."

And Julian, looking at him, saw those signs which, when another's heart is no longer in its normal state, most of us have observed: the lips whitening for a moment, the left hand raised as though about to be pressed to the side, the dead white of the complexion.

"If," he said, "it pains you to tell me anything of the past, why--why--tell it at all? Is it worth while? Your life can contain little that must necessarily be revealed and--even though it should do so--why reveal it?"

"I must," his father answered, "I must tell you. Oh!" he exclaimed, "oh! if at the last it should turn you against me--make you--despise--hate--"

"No! No! never think that," Julian replied quickly, "never think that. What! Turn against you! A difference between you and me! It is impossible."

As he spoke he was standing by his father's side, the latter being seated in his armchair, and Julian's hand was on the elder man's shoulder. Then, as he patted that shoulder--once, too, as he touched softly the almost prematurely grey hair--he said, his voice deep and low and full of emotion:

"Whatever you may tell me can make no difference in my love and respect for you. How can you think so? Recall what we have been to each other since I was a child. Always together till I went to sea--not father and son, but something almost closer, comrades----"

"Ah, Julian!"

"Do you think I can ever forget that, or forget your sacrifices for me; all that you have done to fit me for the one career I could have been happy in? Why, if you told me that you--oh! I don't know what to say! how to make you understand me!--but, if you told me you were a murderer, a convict, a forger, I should still love you; love you as you say you loved the mother I never knew----"

"Don't! Don't! For Heaven's sake don't speak like that--don't speak of her! Your mother! I--I--have to speak to you of her later. But now--now--I cannot bear it!"

For a moment Julian looked at his father, his eyes full of amazement; around his heart a pang that seemed to grip at it. They had not often spoken of his mother in the past, the subject always seeming one that was too painful to 

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