. .I only design,

Thy dross to consume

And thy gold to refine!

 

And God had wrought through pain and disappointment the beauty of soul that had made his father so fine! All in that instant he saw it. Then he spoke, with a gentleness upon him that was not his own, but rather the look his father might have worn.

"I am Dana Barron! And you are--? My mother? Is it so?"

Lisa's baby complexion left no space for lines in her face. Only her eyes gave forth nature's unvarnished truth, and they were hard and glittering. Her delicately penciled vivid mouth was one thin straight line. No smile lurked there. No welcoming light in the whole lovely flowerlike face. Just an alien face that did not know him.

"Indeed!" said Lisa, studying the face before her. "I might have thought you were Jerrold Barron if you hadn't told me. And what was the message you were discussing when I came in? What right did you have to come here, anyway?"

Dana studied her face calmly, a stern look upon his own, regarding the unloveliness he saw as well as the loveliness. His voice was full of assurance and gravity when he answered.

"The right that death gives!" he said solemnly, and Lisa paused and looked at him for a startled instant.

"He is dead?" she said astonished. "Do you mean that Jerrold Barron is dead?"

Dana bowed silently and stood respectfully awaiting her word. And as she looked at him he was so like his father, that courteous attitude of respect, that steady controlled expression, his glance withdrawn to leave her free to think her own thoughts without observation, the way his bright hair waved crisply away from his forehead, that she was taken back to the days when Jerrold Barron was courting her, when for a little while her butterfly nature was caught and carried away by his strength and beauty, till another, less strong but full of deviltry, enticed her.

"You are very like him," she said with a sudden softening of her voice, a passing hunger in her eyes.

"You could give me no praise that would please me better," said Dana, still aloof.

"He was sweet!" said Lisa, with a touch of tenderness in her voice that may have misled her wonderful lover before he married her.

"He was wonderful!" said the son.

"Yes," said Lisa thoughtfully, "I suppose he was. But you see, I wasn't! I guess that was the trouble." Was there almost a wistfulness in her voice?

Corinne stood by, astonished, seeing a new Lisa, and not understanding. She was familiar with her mother's paramours, and her reaction to them, but she had never seen this look in her mother's eyes before, this look of respect and honor, of something deeper than just amusement, bewitchment. Corinne stared at her mother, and gave a little gasp, and the look in her wide young eyes grew almost wistful. Was there yet another kind of Lisa?

Then Dana's voice broke the solemn quiet.

"Then why did you marry him?"

Lisa looked at her son as if she had suddenly been called to stand before a court of justice. Was that fear that flitted across the pupils of her eyes?

Then a light, careless laugh drifted to her lips, as if she would take refuge in mirth.

"Just because he was wonderful and I wanted to try out everything!" she trilled.

Dana was still for a moment, his eyes downcast, perplexed. Then he lifted that clear compelling gaze once more and looked his mother full in the face, speaking in a voice of desperate sorrow.

"Then--why--did you then--leave us?"

The woman dropped her errant gaze from his eyes with a kind of light shame upon her, and when she raised her eyes again a change had come upon her face, and a hardness had returned to her voice.

"Because I was by nature a butterfly. I was born that way! I could not bear confinement to duties." She lifted her chin arrogantly, almost as if she gloried in her shame. "It was not my fault!" The last words were spoken almost merrily as if a sprite were dancing in her eyes and voice.

"Would you have excused your mother if she had done to you what you have done to your son--and to--your daughter?"

Dana's eyes went swiftly toward his sullen, wondering sister standing aloof by the window.

"What have I done to my daughter?" spoke Lisa sharply. "I'm sure I took her with me. What more could I have done?"

"Was that the best that you could have done?" accused Dana solemnly. "To take her from a father such as she had, a father you have just acknowledged to be wonderful, and put her in the way of becoming what you say you are--a butterfly?"

"Oh, that!" laughed Lisa carelessly. "But why shouldn't she be a butterfly if she chose? Jerrold had you, and it is all too evident that he has made you like himself. I fancy Corinne has been happy enough. Ask her if she has missed anything."

Lisa stood there mocking him, the smile upon her painted lips like a mask upon a ghastly face that was hiding its grief with a grin.

Dana looked swiftly toward the unknown sister.

She stood in the frame of the window looking with almost hostile eyes toward her mother. And then she met Dana's question, and her own eyes fell.

"Oh!" she said. "Oh! I don't know. I'm not so keen on butterflies.