Unhappy. Very
unfortunate. Not meant for this world. His mother was my dear friend.
If they had lived--those two---- I did what I could--I think they
will be satisfied--it makes me happy----"
She murmured wearily. And Francey bent her head to listen. Robert
loved her for the tenderness of that gesture. Yet it was bitter, too,
that they should talk of his father. He wanted to go up to them and
tell the truth brutally to Christine's face. He would have liked to
have told them the one dream which he carried over from his sleep. But
it would have been useless. Christine would only smile with a cruel,
loving wisdom.
"You don't understand. You were only a child. Your father was so
unhappy----"
The myth had become an invulnerable reality and had grown golden in the
twilight of her coming blindness. James Stonehouse had been a good
man, a faithful friend, and broken-hearted husband. If those two had
lived everything would have been different. She threw her hallowed
picture of them on the screen of the dripping dusk so that they seemed
to live. Robert saw them too. That was his mother walking at
Christine's side, and then his father---- In a sort of shattering
vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle
of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions,
lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course,
because he could not give up worthlessness for worth.
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