“Why, Dada!” she exclaimed in mock astonishment. “I thought you liked being kidded. I kid all your old friends and it tickles ’em to death.”
“Go to bed!” he retorted, laughing in spite of himself.
She mussed his hair before kissing him good-night, but even as he turned away he could see that her thoughts were elsewhere.
VII
Behind his own door, as he thought it over, the interview was about as unsatisfactory as an interview could be. She had kept it in her own hands, left him no opening for the eloquent appeal he had planned or the severe scolding she deserved. He wished he dared go back and put his arms about her and tell her how deeply he loved her. But he lacked the courage; she wouldn’t understand it. It was the cruelest of ironies that he dare not knock at his child’s door to tell her how precious she was to him.
That was the trouble—he didn’t know how to make her understand! As he paced the floor, he wondered whether anyone in all the world had ever loved him! Yes, there was Marian Storrs; and, again, the woman who had been his wife. Beyond question each had, in her own way, loved him; but both were gathered into the great company of the dead. That question, as to whether anyone had ever loved him, reversed itself: in the whole course of his life had he, Franklin Mills, ever unselfishly loved anyone? This was the most disagreeable question that had forced itself upon Franklin Mills’s attention in a long time. As he tried to go to sleep it took countless forms in the dark, till the room danced with interrogation marks.
He turned on the lights and got up. After moving about restlessly for a time he found himself staring at his reflection in the panel mirror in the bathroom door. It seemed to him that the shadow in the glass was not himself but the phantom of a man he had never known.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I
At Christmas Bruce had sent Millicent a box of flowers, which she had acknowledged in a cordial little note, but he had not called on her, making the excuse to himself that he lacked time. But the real reason was a fear that he had begun to care too much for her. He must not allow himself to love her when he could never marry her; he could never ask any woman to take a name to which he had no honest right.