"If I had married Herbert"
He raised his hand.
"Just a moment. Under the conditions I have named I have a right to make certain stipulations. You have come back. You came without request from me, but this is your home. I could not refuse you shelter if I wanted to, and I do not want to. At the same time, I shall require certain assurances from you. I shall ask you, if you stay at all, to stay until—until your mother no longer needs you. And I will not have McNair in the house."
She sat very still. After all he was right, in a way. And Tom had said She moved a little, put her hands on the back of a chair to steady them.
"May I see mother before I decide?"
He was not brutal; her face, her thin figure, her shabby dress, all had shocked him profoundly. But they had angered him too. She was never to go back to that man; over his dead body would she go back.
"I have told you your mother's condition. If in the face of that you insist on bargaining!"
"The bargain was your suggestion, father."
He had unlocked a drawer of his desk and taken out a bunch of keys, but now he put them back again and closed the drawer.
"When you have made up your mind, I shall give Nora your keys."
And it was then that she said something that roused his pity for the first time. "Do you think she should see me, like this?"
He looked at her. She was thin, shabby, profoundly disillusioned. He got the keys again, and going around the desk, stooped and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
After she had gone he sat down heavily. Through the open door he could see the hall, and beyond it the drawing room. The lamps shone on his tapestries, his paintings, his fine old furniture, his rugs. More than fifty years of his life gone, and that was all he had! He was losing his wife, he had already lost his daughter. Soon he would be alone.
