"You never asked my permission," he continued dispassionately. "Guy has said nothing. I am afraid, Myra, I shall have to see that he is protected from your influence."
She looked at him appealingly, and her eyes were as the night, heavy with unshed rain.
"He—is—your—son," she said slowly. "I—I cannot do him the harm that you can do him, and yet—I am afraid for him. Perhaps you had better send me away, Commandatore. My fears may make a coward of him."
The man spoke as if musing aloud. "Where shall I send you? Back to the gutter from whence I picked you? Do you remember anything of your home, Myra?"
"I know. I know," she protested. "You have reminded me often enough."
He paid no heed to her appeal.
"Yesterday," he said, "I visited the place. No, it has not tumbled down yet, my dear—the very house where your mother sold you to me for half-a-crown and a bottle of gin, a dirty child of five. That was fifteen years ago—fifteen years ago to-day. You were unwanted, uncared for—I wanted you, I cared for you. Let me tell you how I found your mother, Myra?"
She lifted her hands with a gesture of appeal, but he disregarded the action.
"She occupies the same old room. There's but little light finds its way through the dirty window, though enough to show that your mother has not changed her habits—nor her rags. She sat there alone, like a dropsical spider and cried aloud for gin. Would you like to change this"—his hand directed attention to the apartment—"for a share of your mother's abode, Myra Norton?"
Myra had seated herself. She made no answer for a while. Her eyes wandered about the long apartment, with its shaded lights and its flowers and its luxurious furniture. Her hand dropped on the silken gauze of her dress. The man watching smiled as he saw the flash of the diamonds on her fingers and noted the caressing motion of her fingers upon the shimmering fabric. At last she raised her eyes to her questioner.