"A week from today. I am profoundly sorry. It's very rough on Fulton, just when he has closed with this Russian contract and is by way of getting rich."
"It's our one chance for happiness, father."
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "And I think it is your one sure road to misery."
"But you'll see me through?"
"Come to me a year from today. Tell me that during that time you have neither seen Lucy nor communicated with her, but that you still love each other—then I'll see you through."
"My dear father, it's so much better for you to put up the money than for me to borrow it from one of my friends."
"Only because the friend would expect you to pay him back. How would you live when his money was gone—keep on borrowing?"
"Why, father, you're acting like a parent in an old-fashioned novel. Are you threatening to cut me off?"
"My son," said he, "a man who had done well, and who deserved well of the world came to me and showed me his heart—a heart tormented beyond endurance with unreturned love, with jealousy, and with despair. He threw himself upon my mercy. And I said that I would help him, with whatever power of help I have at command. I don't love that man, my son. I love you. But I am on his side. All my fighting blood is aroused when I learn that still another American husband has been wronged by his wife, and by an idle flirting bachelor. God keep me firm in what must seem to you like cruelty in one to whom you have always turned with the utmost frankness and loyalty in your emergencies. And from whom until this moment you have always received help."
I was appalled and thunderstruck. After a while I said, "Father, she sobbed so that I thought she would break a blood vessel. I couldn't stand it. I had to say I would take her away. If I don't, I think she will die or kill herself."