She had not obeyed Luke; she was standing at the door.
"I couldn't wait," she confessed; but she said it with an allegiance that was now all for Luke.
"Come here," her father ordered.
He released Luke's hand and shoulder. The girl ran to him and put her arms about his neck.
"Please be nice, daddy," she whispered. "Please be nice."
Forbes managed to draw a handkerchief and blow his nose.
"I am a fool," he said. "I—Betty, you're looking so much to-night the way your mother—By George, I am a fool! I think I must be getting old, Huber."
§6. In the room at the end of the hall marked "Family Entrance" to a saloon in Fifty-second Street, near Eighth Avenue, a red-headed man dressed in cheap clothes of fashionable cut, was leaning across a table at which he was drinking raw whisky with a girl who, had she not been too heavily painted, would have had a face like that popularly ascribed to Joan of Arc.
HE FOUND IT NECESSARY TO BE EMPHATIC