"It's all right, father," answered Peter, absently dwelling on Miranda.
"What did you talk about? Mostly trash, I suppose?"
"Yes, father." Peter was now at Miranda's feet, asking her to forgive him.
A little later Mr. Smith came in, and the time passed heavily away. Mr. Smith was trying to dissuade Mr. Paragon from taking part in an angry demonstration of railway men who had struck work in the previous week. Already there had been rioting. To-night Mr. Paragon was to address a meeting in the open air, and his talk was loud and bitter. Peter heard all this rhetoric with faint disgust. He was at that time in all things his father's disciple. But to-night his brain was dancing between a proud girl, with eyes that hurt, swinging away from him in her patched frock and dusty shoes, and a long, low-lit table elegant with silver and glass. He could not listen to these foolish men; and when Mr. Smith had reached the summit of his theme in a call to "shoot them down," and when his father was clearly making ready utterly to destroy his enemy, Peter went impatiently from the room.
Mrs. Paragon made ready her husband for the meeting without regarding Mr. Smith's gloomy fears of disorder and riot. It had always been Mr. Paragon's amusement to speak in public, and she had decided that politics could have no serious results. For a few minutes she watched him diminish up the long street, and then returned to the kitchen where Mr. Smith, balancing on his toes, talked still of the dark necessities of blood and iron.
Two hours later Peter's father was brought home dead, with a bullet in his brain.
IX
Peter sat stonily where Miranda left him earlier in the day. It was now quite dark, the evening primrose shining in tall clusters, very pale, within reach of his hand. Since a cab had jingled into hearing, stopped beside the house, and jingled away, hardly a sound had broken into his thoughts. Each rustle of the trees or lightest noise of the garden raised in him a riot of excitement; for he felt that Miranda would come, and he lived moment by moment intensely waiting. He was sure she would not be able to sleep without making her peace.