A cry of pain and rage rang out. The injustice of his father's narrow, inhuman point of view, his inability to show him, even by his impending death, that he must wake up to his duty and stand by Graham and his sisters, sent the blood into Peter's fevered brain.
"My God!" he cried. "You dare to talk like that to me? You dare to kick me in the face after I've told you that I'm ignorant—without listening to my explanation as to how I got into that woman's apartment. All right, then, I'm not going to be the only one to pay. You shall take your share of it. The sins of the children are brought about by the neglect of the fathers, and we'll go and stand together before the Judge to-night for a verdict on that count."
He raised the revolver, aimed it at his father's head, put his finger on the trigger——
There was a blinding flash of lightning. A yellow quivering flame seemed to cut the room in half between the two angry men——
An instant later the Doctor saw Peter standing with both hands over his face. The unfired revolver lay on the table in all its ugliness. And presently, when he had realized what had happened, he went nearer. "God didn't intend that you should do that," he said. And then his voice broke and he went forward to put his arms round Peter's shoulders. "Give me another chance, my dearest boy!" he cried. "Give me another chance!"
But before he could reach his son the great big hurt boy crumpled and fell in a heap at his feet.
XX
For three weeks Peter's bedroom was the one room in the house to which the eyes of all the family were wholly turned. There, in the dark, he lay a victim to an attack of brain fever. Never in a condition of great danger, poor old Peter was ill and the Doctor, who, better than the rest, knew that death has many doors through which life goes out, eyed the specialist who had been called in with pathetic eagerness.
The little mother and Belle were joined at once by Betty, and the three women sat very close together, speaking and even thinking in whispers during the first two days. To the one whose first child he was and the one who waited to be his wife, Peter meant everything good that life had for them, and in their terror that he might be taken away their imaginations ran ahead, as they always do in moments of such poignant anxiety, and they were afraid to look out of the window in case they should see Death, the black camel, kneeling at the gate.