His voice was still hard, and there was no look in his eyes which suggested yielding or pity.
"I deserve nothing from you," replied the judge. "How can I? And yet I could not help coming. After all, you are my son!"
"How did you learn it?" asked Paul.
"Last night I went to see your mother," he replied. "She is staying at a little house not far from here. I received a letter asking me to go to a certain number in Dixon Street. It was couched in such language that I could not refuse. I went there, and I saw your mother. I had thought she was dead—at least, I had no reason to believe her alive. There I learnt everything. Since then there's been only one thought in my mind, only one longing in my heart——"
"And that?" said Paul.
"The one thought in my mind," said the judge, "has been that you are my son; the one longing in my heart has been that you would forgive me and love me. It took some time to shape itself, but there it is, and I have come. I cannot put my feelings into words properly. Words seem so poor, so inadequate! Can't you understand?"
The picture of his mother's face rose up before Paul's eyes as his father spoke, and with it the remembrance of the long years of pain, sorrow, and loneliness.
"Do you not understand?" asked the judge again.
"I understand my mother's sufferings," said Paul. "I understand how, when she was a young girl, forsaken, disgraced, she suffered agonies which cannot be put into words. I understand how she tramped all the way from Scotland to Cornwall, the home of her mother's people. I understand what she felt towards the man who betrayed her, especially when her only child was born in a workhouse, a nameless pauper! I understand that!"
The judge stood with bowed head. He might have been stunned by some heavy blow. He rocked to and fro, and for a moment Paul thought he was going to fall.