He spoke heavily, sitting inert and sunken, with the lamplight pouring over his wrinkled face and white hair.
Suddenly Viola ran toward him. She put her arms round his neck, close and warm, and her tears fell on his hair, on his face, on his coat. She hugged his head against her breast and kissed it wildly, sobbing over and over:
“Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father! Oh, my poor father!”
The old man patted her head and said gently:
“Don’t—don’t go on that way. You didn’t say anything. I’ve forgotten it already.”
But she knew he had not, and continued sobbing out passionate, broken sentences:
“I didn’t mean it—I spoke without thinking. Oh, please forget it! Don’t look like that! I didn’t mean it—I didn’t mean it for a minute.”
He tried to soothe and comfort her, but he himself was very quiet. When she had sobbed herself into a state of apathetic exhaustion, he helped her up-stairs to her room, and prowled up and down in the passageway, every now and then listening at her door till he heard her caught breaths regulate themselves into the long, regular ones of heavy sleep.
Then he went into his own room. He did not go to bed, but sat motionless, shrunk together, staring at the light. His love for his daughter had been dear to him, but a thousand times dearer had been his realization of her love for him. When all the world had turned its back on him, the knowledge that he was still believed in, watched for, cherished by this one young girl had made life as well worth living as it had been in the days of his glory. And now he had lost that—it was gone forever. He was an old man, and to-night he had received his death-blow.
The day after his scene with Viola was the happiest John Gault had known for many months. The memory of her pain, of her tears, of her humiliation, could not outweigh the joy he felt in her exculpation. Even his own shame at the meanness of the part he had played was pushed aside by this pervasive, irradiating, uplifting sense of happiness. No cloud, no shadow of disbelief, could ever come between them now. He could love her without mistrust, without fear, without suspicion. He would absorb her, envelop her, inwrap her in the might of his passion. He had wronged her bitterly, but with what limitless tenderness, what depths of devotion, would he make up for it! He was troubled by no doubts as to her feeling for him. The memory of the light in her eyes as they met his, of the flush on the cheek, were enough. Viola was his when he chose to claim her.