Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/178

 that could possibly fall upon his head,—and just in the very hour when the upward way was clearing!

His face was flat upon the page he had meant to fill with words of love and help to Rose. Above him, on the wall, was the sheet of faded yellow paper that bore his just amended motto. Two pins, loosened no doubt when he changed the word on the legend, had been whipped out by the breeze which swept in through the open window, and this breeze now fluttered the free end of the yellow sheet insistently like a pennant, so that the distracted man lifted his clouded eyes and read once again, as if to make sure:

"Eternal Loyalty is the Price of Success."

"Loyalty to what?" he demanded fiercely of himself. To his ambition? Or to two little growing lives that trusted and believed in him?

To put the question like that was to answer it. John rose abruptly, snatched the legend from the wall, crumpled it as he had the envelope, and cast it on the floor. He didn't need it any more.

"And yet," he reflected after a moment, "why not?"

"Uncle John, when will you be president?" Tayna had asked him that one night, and he smiled as in fancy he felt her arms again about his neck, her bare feet cuddling in his lap. The thought roused him. He was not surrendering all ambition when he surrendered a stage ambition. He was a man of greatly increased ability now as compared with then. Surely a man was pretty poor stuff if, having been defeated in one desire through no fault of his own, he could not carve out another niche for himself somewhere in the wide hall of achievement. John stooped and recovered the crumpled square of yellow, smoothed its wrinkles reverently, and fastened it again and more securely upon the wall above him.