“Oh, I know that. How are my people? Have you seen my father lately? Or my mother? Or—Olive?” A pathetic tremor shook his voice.
“Why, haven't you seen them yet?” demanded Atherton.
Halleck laughed cynically. “My dear friend, my steamer arrived this morning, and I'm just off the New York train. I've hurried to your office in all the impatience of friendship. I'm very lucky to find you here so late in the day! You can take me home to dinner, and let your domestic happiness preach to me. Come, I rather like the notion of that!”
“Halleck,” said Atherton, without heeding his banter, “I wish you would go away again! No one knows you are here, you say, and no one need ever know it.”
Halleck set his lips and shook his head, with a mocking smile. “I'm surprised at you, Atherton, with your knowledge of human nature. I've come to stay; you must know that. You must know that I had gone through everything before I gave up, and that I haven't the strength to begin the struggle over again. I tell you I'm beaten, and I'm glad of it; for there is rest in it. You would waste your breath, if you talked to me in the old way; there's nothing in me to appeal to, any more. If I was wrong—But I don't admit, any more, that I was wrong: by heaven, I was right!”
“You are beaten, Halleck,” said Atherton sorrowfully. He pushed himself back in his chair, and clasped his hands together behind his head, as his habit was in reasoning with obstinate clients. “What do you propose to do?”
“I propose to stay.”
“What for?”
“What for? Till I can prove that he is dead.”
“And then?”