"You have not forced me," he said slowly. "I can refuse. You are of age. You can be sued and imprisoned quite independently of me."
Edgar's heart beat fast and he set the even teeth.
"You have counted once more on my unwillingness to have this occur; but that unwillingness has been weakening for years."
Still Edgar did not speak. Kathleen, standing by her father's chair, her hands clasped tightly, dared not. She noted that Edgar's gaze did not fall. He met his father's eyes in crimson silence.
"You know," continued Mr. Fabian distinctly, "whether I have exhausted persuasion and argument with you. You know my futile attempts to rouse your ambition to be my coadjutor, my successor. What you do not know, because you are incapable of understanding, is the agony of the slow death of my hope in my only son: the successive stages of thought which have finally reduced me to closing the account, and charging him up to profit and loss."
Kathleen watched her brother under the lash with the same pitiful misery she felt for his punishments when they were children.
"But you're going to try him in this new field, father," she said beseechingly.
There was a space of silence, then Mr. Fabian spoke:—
"I am going to trust your sister's judgment in this matter, Edgar. She believes you are in earnest. I am going to pay these tuition bills, and the coming months will show whether this is another passing toy, or a matter in which you can make good. To find you are good for anything, my boy," added the father, after another painful pause, "will be an amazing and welcome discovery."