THE DECISION
Monica and Frank were alone in the former's private sitting-room at the Eldorado Hotel. Phyllis had conducted him to the door of the room, where she waited until he had passed safely within. Then she discreetly withdrew to pass many anxious moments pacing the narrow limits of her own bedroom on the same floor.
The sitting-room was a large, handsomely furnished apartment with two lofty windows looking out upon the busy street, directly over the hotel's entrance porch. At one of these windows Frank was standing, with his back turned upon the room and the woman who had drawn so near to him. His troubled blue eyes were fixed upon the busy life outside, but it had no interest for him. Whatever he had gone through before, he believed that he was now facing the climax of his life. It had arisen so suddenly, so unexpectedly, as such climaxes do; and it found him ready for impulsive action that had to be controlled.
Monica was just behind him, and a little to one side. One hand was resting upon the cold radiator as though she needed its support. Her beautiful face was drawn, and pale, great dark rings surrounded her eyes. Her age was strongly marked just now, it was even exaggerated, and had somehow communicated itself to her shoulders, which drooped in an unusually hopeless manner.
It had been a long, and for both, a painful interview. It had been a scene of love and humility on the part of the proud wife of Alexander Hendrie, and of affection yet decision, not untouched with bitterness, on the part of the boy who had developed so quickly into a man of responsibility. The mother love had pleaded with a humility that was pathetic, and the man had listened, steeling his heart against the inroads which the sound of that gentle voice made upon his determination.
Never for one moment did he find aught of blame for her. Never did he, by word or look, convey anything but the love she had always known. How could it be otherwise? Nothing could have broken down a love such as his, founded as it was upon long years of self-sacrificing devotion toward himself. Monica was still to him all she had ever been—his mother.
But now her final appeal, that he should abandon his present life and return to her, had been made, and, as the end came, she handed him a letter in Alexander Hendrie's handwriting.
The letter remained unread in his hands, held limply, a thing apparently of no interest to him.
"Won't you read it, Frank? Won't you read it—for my sake?" Monica urged, after a long, painful silence.
There was something like tears in her voice, and the sound became irresistible to the man.