He loved her perhaps the more for that unattainable soul of hers. He had won her, wed her, possessed her, made her his in body and name; but her soul was still uncaptured. He vowed and vowed again that he would make her altogether his. She was his wife; she should be like other wives.
When he reached home his father was dead. His mother was too weak with grief to rebuke him for being on a butterfly-hunt at such a time.
He knelt by her bed and held her in his arms while she told him of his father’s long fight to keep alive till his boy came back. She begged him not to leave her again, and he promised her that he would make her home his.
The days that ensued were filled with tasks of every solemn kind. There was the funeral to prepare for and endure, and after that the assumption of all his father’s wealth. This came to him, not as a mighty treasure to squander, but as a delicate invalid to nurture and protect.
Sheila’s telegrams and letters were incessant and so full of devotion for him that they had room for little about herself.
She told him she was working hard and missing him terribly, and what her next address would be. She tried vainly to mask her increasing terror of the dreadful opening in Chicago.
He wished that he might be with her, yet knew that he had no real help to give her. He prayed for her success, but with a mental reservation that if the play were the direst failure he would not be sorry, for it would bring them to peace the sooner.
He tried to school his undisciplined mind to the Herculean task of learning in a few days what his father had acquired by a life of toil. The factory ran on smoothly under the control of its superintendents, but big problems concerning the marketing of the output, consolidation with the trust, and enlargement of the plant, were rising every hour. These matters he must decide like an infant king whose ministers disagree.
To his shame and dismay, he could not give his whole heart to the work; his heart was with Sheila. He thought of her without rancor now. He recognized the bravery and honor that had kept her with the company. As she had told him once before, treachery to Reben would be a poor beginning of her loyalty to Bret. The very things he cherished bitterly against her turned sweet in his thoughts. He decided that he could not live without her, and might as well recognize it.