“I'm sorry, Dick. She apparently reached the breaking point a week or two ago. She knew you had been here and hadn't seen her, for one thing.” He hesitated. “You've heard of her engagement?”
“Yes.”
“I didn't want it,” her father said drearily. “I suppose she knows her own business, but the thing's done. She sent you a message,” he added after a pause. “She's glad it's cleared up and I believe you are not to allow her to drive you away. She thinks David needs you.”
“Thank you. I'll have to stay, as she says.”
There was another uncomfortable silence. Then Walter Wheeler burst out:
“Confound it, Dick, I'm sorry. I've fought your battles for months, not here, but everywhere. But here's a battle I can't fight. She isn't angry. You'll have to get her angle of it. I think it's something like this. She had built you up into a sort of superman. And she's—well, I suppose purity is the word. She's the essence of purity. Then, Leslie told me this to-night, she learned from him that you were back with the woman in the case, in New York.”
And, as Dick made a gesture:
“There's no use going to him. He was off the beaten track, and he knows it. He took a chance, to tell her for her own good. He's fond of her. I suppose that was the last straw.”
He sat still, a troubled figure, middle-aged and unhandsome, and very weary.
“It's a bad business, Dick,” he said.