Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/166

 bless you and guard you and make you happy some day as you deserve. 2em

Armitage heard Doris move and looked up. She was standing by the fire, gazing down into it. The photograph on the mantel was missing. From her attitude he judged that she was holding it against her heart.

Men rarely weep, at least rarely from tenderness. The tear-ducts which lead down into the sentimentality in a man's heart seem to dry up after childhood. But as Armitage stared at the letter again the lines with their odd but familiar little curlicues and shaded capitals became grotesquely blurred. He recalled a line in another letter written by this hand. "You were to me a cipher drawn on a blackboard, something visible through the agency of chalk, but representing—nothing." He had almost forgotten one thing—that cable to Progreso. He would send it on the way home. This time to-morrow night Doris would learn that her father was dead. The mockery of it!

He stood up, resolute and masterfully.