“I shall never forget him,” she replied without looking at her father. “I remember so well what he was, what he did, what he surely would have become had he lived, that I don’t want Arthur to remain in his shadow, to be so much less than he was. If there’s anything great in a man’s soul, I think it’s wrong to choke it with weeds, and—and——”
“You think the political weed is very suffocating?” her father commented dryly. “As far as that goes, you’re right, my dear; but I’ve managed to keep a little above the worst growth all these years, and it’s possible that Arthur might do some weeding out. Reform is not only a fad—it’s a fact.”
“You’re made for that kind of a life, papa; you can stand like a rock in the midst of the tempest. You have the instinct and the prestige and the great traditions that go to make a man safe in politics; but Arthur has none of these things to give him a raison d’être in your world. I feel sure it would dwarf him and spoil him. I want him to go on, to finish his own work.”
“And if he gets killed on the way, you’ll still have the glory, eh?”
She turned with a shocked face.
“As if I cared for anything more than Arthur’s life!”
The judge strummed on the table with his fingers. His lumbago was rending him to the point of incivility.
“Exactly! But you’re sending him to the pole to die as Overton died, without reaping any reward but—death.”
She listened in silence, her eyes fixed on his angry face, but her mind seemed to be far away. In fact, she was again questioning herself. This recurrent mention of Overton shocked her new sense of security, and seemed like a return of the moment when Dr. Gerry’s question had broken the spell of her joy. After all, was it meant that she should not forget? Must she try out and search her heart yet further?
“I want you to drop this nonsense,” her father went on more composedly. “Faunce will give up the idea if you will let him. I want him here. I may not live long—I’m getting old, Diane, and I want you married and settled.”