No matter how humble her contrition, how abject her apologies,
nothing could ever get back of what was written, or change the fact that
she had believed him capable of that.
The young man pursued his thoughts over three miles of city streets, and
returned to the house of Surface.
The hour was 6.30. He took the nurse's seat by the bedside of his father
and sent her away to her dinner.
There was a single gas-light in the sick-room, turned just high enough
for the nurse to read her novels. The old man lay like a log, though
breathing heavily; under the flickering light, his face looked ghastly.
It had gone all to pieces; advanced old age had taken possession of it
in a night. Moreover the truth about the auburn mustaches and goatee was
coming out in snowy splotches; the fading dye showed a mottle of red and
white not agreeable to the eye. Here was not merely senility, but
ignoble and repulsive senility.
His father!... his _father!_ O God! How much better to have sprung, as
he once believed, from the honest loins of Tim Queed!
The young man averted his eyes from the detestable face of his father,
and let his thoughts turn inward upon himself.
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