ELLIE was in the garden, and interrupted his progress toward a belated dinner. “Father wants to see you,” she called; “at the Club, of course.” He wondered absently, approaching the Club, what his father wanted. The rooms occupied the second story of the edifice that housed the administration of the county; the main corridor was choked by a crowd that moved noisily toward an auditorium in the rear, but the Club was silent, save for the click of invisible billiard balls.

His father was asleep in the reading room, a newspaper spread upon his knees, and one thin hand twisted in his beard. Through an open window drifted the strains of a band on the Courthouse lawn. The older man woke, clearing his throat sharply. “Well, Anthony,” he nodded. Anthony found a chair.

His father leaned forward, regarding him with a keen, kindly gaze. “I'm told the garage has gone up,” he commenced.

“Sam took his car away; it was Alfred's infernal tinkering; he can't leave a machine alone.”

“Did you close affairs satisfactorily, stop solvent?”

“There's a little debt of about six dollars.”

The other sought his wallet, and, removing a rubber band, counted six dollars into Anthony's hand. “Meet that in the morning.” He leaned hack, tapping the wallet with deliberate fingers. “I suppose you have no plan for the immediate future,” he observed.

“Nothing right now.”

“I have one for you, though, as 'right now' as this week.”

Anthony listened respectfully, his thoughts still dwelling upon the beauty of the dusk without, of life. “You have tried a number of things in the past few years without success. I have started you in a small way again and again, only to observe the familiar course of a failure inevitable from your shiftless habits. You are not a bad boy, but you have no ability to concentrate, like a stream spread all over the meadow—you have no course. You're a loiterer.”

“Yes, sir,” said Anthony, from the midst of his abstraction.

“You are too old for that now, either it must stop at once, or you will become definitely worthless. I am going to make a determined effort—I am going to send you to California, your brother-in-law writes that he can give you something.”

The term California sounded in Anthony's brain like the unexpected clash of an immense hell. It banished his pleasant revery in disordered shreds, filling him with sudden dismay.

“I telegraphed Albert yesterday,” the even tones continued, “and have his answer in my pocket. You are to go out to him immediately.”

“But that's impossible,” Anthony interrupted; “it just can't be done.”

“Why not?”

He found himself completely at a loss to give adequate expression to his reason for remaining in Ellerton. His joy was so new that he had scarcely formulated it to himself, it evaded words, defied definition—it was a thing of dreams, a vision in a shining garment, a fountain of life at the bottom of his heart.

“Come; why not?”

“I don't want to go away from Ellerton... just now.”

“That is precisely what you must do. I can understand your desire to remain close by your mother—she has an excuse for you, assistance, at every turn.”

“That isn't the reason; it's... it's,” he boggled horribly, “a girl.”

“Indeed,” his father remarked dryly.

Anthony shrunk painfully from the unsympathetic voice of the elder. A new defiance of his father welled hotly within him, corrupting the bonds of discipline that had held him lovingly to his parent throughout the past. A chasm opened between them; and, when Anthony spoke again, it was with a voice of insipient insubordination.

“It isn't the silly stuff you think,” he told the other; “I'm engaged!”

“What on?” pithily came the inquiry. “Unfortunately I can't afford the luxury of a daughter-in-law. I thought you were something more of a man than to bring your wife into your mother's house.”

“I sha'n't; we can get along until I... find work.”

“Do you mean that your wife will support you?”

“Not altogether; she will help until—until—” he stopped miserably before the anger confronting him in the other's gaze: it was useless to explain, he thought; But if his father laughed at him, at his love, he would leave the room and never see him again. “I can't see why money is so damned holy!” he broke out; “why it matters so infernally where it comes from; it seems to me only a dirty detail.”

“It is the measure of a man's honor,” the elder Ball told him inexorably; “how it is made or got stamps you in the world. I am surprised to hear that you would even consider taking it from a woman, surprised and hurt. It shows all the more clearly the necessity for your going at once into a hard, healthy existence. Your mother will get you ready; a couple of days should do it.”

“... all unexpected,” Anthony muttered; “I must think about it, see some one. I'll—I'll talk to you to-morrow. That's it,” he enunciated more hopefully, “to-morrow—”

“Entirely unnecessary,” his father interrupted, “nothing to be gained by delay or further talk. The thing's arranged.”

“I think I won't go,” Anthony told him slowly. The other picked up the paper, smoothing out the creases. “Very well,” he replied; “I dare say your mother will do something for you.—Women are the natural source of supplies for the sort of person you seem at the point of becoming.” A barrier of paper, covered with print in regular columns, shut one from the other.

Anthony burned under a whelming sense of injustice. He decided that he would leave the room, his father, forever; but, somehow, he remained motionless in his chair, casting about in his thoughts for words with which to combat the elder's scorn. He thought of Eliza; she smiled at him with appealing loveliness; he felt her letter in his pocket, remembered her boundless generosity. He couldn't leave her! The band in the square below was playing a familiar operatic lament, and the refrain beat on his consciousness in waves of despairing and poignant longing. A sea of misery swept over him in which he struggled like a spent swimmer—Eliza was the far, silver shore toward which he fought. It wasn't fair—a sob almost mastered him—to ask him to go away now, when he had but found her.

“It's not Siberia,” he heard his father say, “nor a life sentence; if this—this 'girl' is serious, you will be closer working for her in California than idle in Ellerton.”

“I don't want to go away from her,” he whispered; “the world's such a hell of a big, empty place... things happen.” He dashed some bright tears from his eyes, and, turning his back on the other, gazed through the window at the tops of the maple trees—a black tracery of foliage against the lights below.

“Two or three years should set you on your feet, give you an opportunity to return.” Eternity could scarcely have seemed more appalling than the term casually indicated by his father, it was unthinkable! A club member entered, fingering the racked journals on the long table, exchanging trivial comments with the older Ball. It seemed incredible to Anthony, in the face of the cataclysm which threatened him, that the world should continue to revolve callously about such topics. It was an affront to the gravity, the dignity, of his suffering. He swiftly left the room.