P.S.G.

He hung up the receiver with a click of relief as if he had averted some terrible calamity and sank wearily back in his chair, beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead. It was almost as if he had had a personal encounter with Lilla. Any crossing of swords between them had always left him with a sense of defeat.

He tried to rally and busy himself with the other letters. Two from his publishers demanding copy at once; an invitation from an exclusive scientific society to speak before their next national convention; a call from a western college to occupy the chair of sciences; a proposition from a lecture bureau to place his name on their list in a course of brilliant speakers. He threw them down aimlessly and took up the last letter without glancing at the address. They all seemed so trivial. What was fame to an empty life?

Then he brought back his wandering gaze and read: “Dear Father—”

He started. Not for several years had he read a letter beginning that way. Athalie had never written to him. He had not expected it. She was Lilla’s child.

But this was from Alice’s child. The writing was so exactly like her girl-mother’s that it gave his heart a wrench to look at it. Well, it had not mattered. She did not belong to him—never had. He had given her away. He had always felt her childish little letters full of stilted gratitude, for the gifts he sent were merely perfunctory. Why should she care for him? She could not remember him. He had been rather relieved than otherwise because he had a troubled feeling that they entailed more than a mere check at Christmas and birthdays. And now after several years’ silence she had written again! Strange that both his children should have been suddenly thrust upon his notice on this same day! He read on:

I suppose you received the word I sent while you were abroad that Grandfather died of influenza last November right in the midst of his work. Grandmother has been slipping away ever since, though she tried to rally for my sake. But two weeks ago she left me, and now I am alone. I sent a letter to your foreign address, but I saw in the papers today that you had landed and were going to Silver Sands, and a great longing has come over me to see my father once before I go to work. I am not going to be a burden to you. Grandfather had saved enough to keep

me comfortably even if I did nothing, but I have also secured a good position with a very good salary for a beginner, and I shall be able to care for myself, I think, without at present touching the money that was left me.

Grandmother said something a few days before she died that has given me courage to write this letter. I have always felt, and especially since you married again, that you did not want me or you would not have given me to Grandmother, and of course I don’t want to intrude upon you, although I’ve always been very proud of you and have read everything I could find in the papers about you. But one day two weeks ago Grandmother said: “Silver”—they always called me Silver, you know, because they wanted to keep the Alice for Mother—“Silver, I’ve been thinking that perhaps your father might need you now. After I’m gone perhaps you’d better go and see.”

So, Father, I’m coming! I hope you won’t mind—

Patterson Greeves suddenly dropped the letter and buried his face in his hands with a groan that was half anguish, half anger, at a Fate that had suddenly decided to make him a puppet in the comedy of life. He was like one under mortal anguish. He kicked the heavy desk chair savagely back from under him and strode to the window like a caged animal. Staring out with unseeing eyes at the calm dusk of the evening sky across the meadow, he tried to realize that this was really himself, Patterson Greeves, to whom all this incredible thing was happening.