I--never knew--a father!"

And suddenly her voice broke into a half sob, and she dropped down on a low satin stool embroidered in dragons, burying her bright pretty face in her young hands, and a tear rolled down between her fingers and dropped with a splash upon the hardwood floor.

Then angrily Lisa spoke!

"Oh, for goodness' sake! Tears! Get out of my presence! You know I never let you cry, Corinne! And especially about a thing like this! Crying for something you've never known! How absurd! Go to your room, Corinne!"

Corinne did not stir, but her mother turned to Dana.

"Now, I hope you see what trouble you've made! Was that what Jerrold Barron sent you here for, to make trouble for me? Where is that message you were supposed to have brought? Are you going to tell it to me or not? I have no more time to waste."

Dana's eyes came back to Lisa's face.

"The message is in a letter my father sent," he said quietly, putting his hand in his pocket and taking out an envelope. "I did not seek to bring you trouble, though you never seem to have thought of the trouble you made for my father and me. All through the years I have been trying to reconcile my ideal of a lovely woman, a wife and mother, with one who could abandon as wonderful a husband as my father must have been, and a little trusting child. It has been hard for me to believe you could actually have done it intentionally. But now I see it has been so. Here is the letter!"

He held the envelope out to her, and Lisa with a strange look in her face, clutched it and darted an angry flash of her eyes at him.

"That is all I care to hear from you at present!" she said sharply, and turning left the room.

Dana stood watching the door where she had vanished as if he thought she might return presently. And over on the low stool near the window Corinne sat weeping. The room was very still except for the quick little breath of a sob she gave now and then. And after a time Dana became aware of that sound and turned toward her. It was almost as if he were in a strange land and could not get used to the sights and sounds, could not take them all in at once.

The girl was sitting bowed over with her face in her hands, a picture of utter dejection. Somehow her attitude did not fit those brilliant gaudy garments she was wearing. She would have been more fitting in the attire of an urchin of the street. She looked so little and pitiful with her bright hair in confusion catching the light from the window, that Dana's heart was suddenly stirred for her. A little sister! His own! And she was sorrowing! Yet while he took in the picture something warned him. Perhaps it was not real sorrow.

He studied her an instant, then he spoke.

"Why are you crying?" he asked, and there was both bewilderment and gentleness in his tone.

She lifted her head and her face was streaked with tears. Her makeup was a wreck. Lipstick and mascara mingled curiously. He looked at her aghast, and then turned his eyes away as if it were a sight not decorous for him to see.

But his glance went back as she spoke with a pitiful little wail in her voice, a kind of desperate anger.

"Because it is so terrible!" she said, and shuddered. "One's mother! One's father! You here and we don't know each other! I hate it all. I never had a father! I needed one!" Her face dropped into her lifted hands again.

Suddenly Dana went over and stood above her. He laid his hand on the bright head with a caressing touch.

"Little sister--I'm sorry that I had to bring this pain to you!"

The small shoulders that had been shaking with almost angry tears grew very still, and then she lifted her face and looked at him curiously. Next, in a hard little voice she asked as a child might have asked: "Why should you care?"

A great gentleness came into his face, and then he suddenly smiled.

"I don't know," he said. "But I do. Perhaps because you are my sister! Perhaps because I know my father would care!"

A hungry look came into the girl's eyes.

"Would he, do you think? For, after all, it wasn't my fault. I never knew him. Why do you think he would have cared?"

"Because I knew my father. I'd like to tell you about him. But--we can't talk here!" He gave a quick look about the alien room then glanced down at her again. "But I've got to tell you about Father. Go and wash your face and take off those outlandish clothes.