Mrs. Treharne, astonished and perhaps a little pleased at the earnestness of the man's self-revelation, nevertheless shook her head wearily.
"Yet you know very well, at this moment, that I must leave you," she said broodingly.
"Well, I'm going to be fair with you," said Judd, the latent manhood, that had been buried under the callousness of years, showing in him. "I'm leaving that part of it up to you. I wouldn't do that, either, if I didn't care for you as I do. But you've got your end of it, and a big end. You're entitled to do what you are prompted to do in consideration of your daughter. I'm not hound enough to try to block you in that. I'll go further and say that you're right about it. If I were in your place I'd do the same thing. The devil of it is that I care for you all the more when I see you moved to give your daughter the fair deal she's entitled to. I hate to have you go. I don't know what I'll do with myself without you. But you've hit me right where I live in this business—the progeny end of it. The young ones have got to be thought of. And there is, I suppose, no way whereby you could remain openly under my protection and at the same time be doing the right thing by your daughter. Of course, if you cared to be more private about it, why——"
"No, no—don't even suggest that," put in Mrs. Treharne. "That would be a pitiable evasion. You know that."
"Well, probably it would, but I'm putting all angles of the thing up to you," said Judd, perhaps more in earnest that he had ever been in his life before. "One thing, though, you must leave to me. It's only the fair thing that I should continue to take care of you, no matter where you go."
"Not even that, Fred," replied Mrs. Treharne, determinedly. "That, too, would be a dodging of the issue. I have a few thousands put by. They came from you, of course, but before I had made up my mind to—to live otherwise. I shall manage. Let me have my own way this final once, won't you?" and she smiled wanly.
Judd rose and picked up his hat and coat.
"Don't take any leaps in the dark, Tony, that's all," he said. "Think the thing all over. Don't give yourself the worst of it. You know that I won't give you the worst of it. I never have, have I? Maybe you'll change your mind about it all. I'll be back tomorrow night and see. Goodnight."
There were tears standing in the eyes of the huge-girthed man as he went heavily out of the room, and his shoulders were hunched forward as if he had suddenly passed from elderliness to old age.
Mrs. Treharne, for almost an hour after Judd had gone, sat, chin in palm, gazing into vacancy. Then she rose, heavily enough for a woman so fragile as she now had become, gazed for a moment in the glass at her haggard features, and shook her head, smiling bitterly.