Page:The Indian Drum (1917 original).pdf/80

64 name which some one had told him was his father's, the passions which, when dreaming of his father, he had felt.

As he looked up from the picture to the girl who had given it to him, startled at himself and believing she must think his lack of feeling strange and unnatural, he surprised her gazing at him with wetness in her eyes. He fancied at first it must be for his father, and that the picture had brought back poignantly her fears. But she was not looking at the picture, but at him; and when his eyes met hers, she quickly turned away.

His own eyes filled, and he choked. He wanted to thank her for her manner to him in the afternoon, for defending his father and him, as she had at the dinner table, and now for this unplanned, impulsive sympathy when she saw how he had not been able to feel for this man who was his father and how he was dismayed by it. But he could not put his gratitude in words.

A servant's voice came from the door, startling him.

"Mrs. Sherrill wishes you told she is waiting, Miss Sherrill."

"I'll be there at once." Constance, also, seemed startled and confused; but she delayed and looked back to Alan.

"If—if we fail to find your father," she said, "I want to tell you what a man he was."

"Will you?" Alan asked. "Will you?"

She left him swiftly, and he heard her mother's voice in the hall. A motor door closed sharply, after a minute or so; then the house door closed. Alan stood still a moment longer, then, remembering the book which he held, he drew a chair up to the light, and read the short, dry biography of his father printed on the page