“What do you mean, ‘tomorrow about this time’?”

“Go read the story of Jehoram and you’ll understand. The city was in a state of siege. The people were starving crazed by hunger, were eating their own children, and appealing to the king to settle their demoniacal quarrels. The king was blaming God for it all, and suddenly the prophet appeared and told him that ‘tomorrow about this time’ there would be plenty to eat and cheap enough for everybody. How do you know but tomorrow about this time God may have relief and joy all planned and on the way?”

Greeves turned away impatiently and began his angry pacing of the room again.

“Oh, that’s the kind of idealism you were prating about last night with your dreams that God was working out His purposes for the laboring classes and all that bosh! Excuse me, but I don’t believe any such rot any more for the classes or the nations than I do for the individual. Take myself for instance. If I don’t send off a letter I just wrote to stop it, by tomorrow about this time I may have a worse mess on my hands than I have now. I tell you your God has it in for me! I didn’t tell you I had another daughter, did I? Well, I have, and she’s taken it into her head to come here also. Here! Read this letter!”

He picked up Silver’s letter and thrust it into the young man’s hand. The minister glanced at the clear handwriting, caught the words “Dear Father,” and pressed it back upon Greeves.

“I oughtn’t to read this!” he said earnestly.

“Yes! Read!” commanded the older man. “I want you to know the situation. Then perhaps you’ll understand my position. I’d like to have one person in the town who understands.”

Bannard glanced through the lines with apology and deference in his eyes.

“This is no letter to be ashamed of!” he exclaimed as he read. “This girl had a good mother, I’m sure! Or a good grandmother, anyway!”

Greeves stopped suddenly by the window, staring out with unseeing eyes, and his voice was husky with feeling when he spoke after an instant of silence.

“She had the best grandmother in the world, I think—but—her mother was wonderful!” There was reverence and heartbreak in his tone.

“Ah!” said the minister earnestly. “Then she will be like her mother!”

“I could not bear it—if she were like her mother!” breathed the man at the window with a voice almost like a sob and flung himself away from the light, pacing excitedly back to the shadowed end of the room.

“But you say you have written her not to come?” interrupted the minister suddenly, glancing thoughtfully at the letter in his hand. “Why did you do that? I should think from the letter she might be a great help. Why not let her come?”

The father wheeled around sharply again, kicking a corner of the rug that almost tripped him as if it had personality and were interfering with his transit.

“Let her come! Let her come here and meet that other girl? Not on any account. I—could not bear it!“ Again that tortured wistfulness in his voice like a half sob.

The minister watched him curiously with a sorrowful glance at the letter in his hand.

“I don’t quite see —how you can bear not to!” he said slowly. “After reading that appeal for your love—!”

“Appeal? What appeal? I don’t know what you mean?”

He took the letter hurriedly and dashed himself into his desk chair with a deep sigh, beginning to read with hurried, feverish eyes.

“Man! I didn’t read all this before! I was so upset! And then the other girl came!”

There was silence for an instant while he read. Then his eyes lifted with a look of almost fear in them. “Man alive!” he gasped. “She’s coming this morning! My letter will be too late!” He picked up the envelope he had so recently addressed and looked at it savagely as if somehow it were to blame. “Too late!” He flung it angrily on the floor, where it slid under the edge of the desk and lay. The tortured man jerked himself out of his chair again and began his walk up and down.

“What shall I do? You’re a minister. You ought to know. She’s on her way now. She’ll be here in a few minutes, and I can’t have her. She mustn’t meet that other girl! I can’t have Alice’s child see her! What would you do? Oh, why did God let all this come about?” He wheeled around impatiently and stamped off again. “I’ll have to get the other one off to school somewhere, I suppose. You wouldn’t be willing to meet that train and say I was called away, would you? Get her to go to a hotel in the city somewhere and wait? I could hire an automobile and take Athalie away.