 | A Father |  |
* * *
"Yaes!" Her eyes were stern with hatred and contempt now. "Yaes, my mother left me only that to know my father by. Do you remember her? Madame Sunbeam of Nagasaki?"
The man had come closer to her now, and was looking at her face with sad eyes.
"Yes, yes; and you."
"I was born after you left—nineteen years ago."
He saw his wife's white, horror-stricken face, his son's stupefied look of agony, and he tried to pull himself together.
"I—er—"
"My mother killed herself." The girl's voice was relentless as fate. "They told her you had a wife here in America. She did not care to live after that—"
"Father! Father! Yuri! What does it mean?"
Gerald's frantic voice broke on them now. He had stood there listening, only half comprehending the truth. The cry seemed wrung from him.
"Father, I love her. If—if it is all a hideous mistake, say something. Speak—for God's sake!"
"It is true," he said, brokenly.
Gerald rose unsteadily. He looked at his father a moment, and caressed the girl with one last look of love and heartbreak; then he turned and left them.
"He will recover," said the father, "he is only a boy. You shall have everything money can buy, all heart could desire; I will—"
The tense excitement was gone. Weary shadows of care crept into the girl's face.
"But I—I love him with all my soul," she said brokenly.
| A Father | |