"Is greater than your love for your father. I suppose I ought to be able
to understand that, but I am not. Evan, you can't do it--you mustn't do
it; every drop of that father's blood in your veins ought to cry out
against it."
"Ah!" he exclaimed with a sudden indrawing of his breath. "You don't
know what it is costing me!"
"Truly, I don't," she asserted calmly. "Your father is a great and good
man. If he had a daughter instead of a son, she would know and
understand." Then, in a quick and generous upflash of feeling: "I wish
he had a daughter--I wish I were she! I should try to show him that
blood is thicker than water!"
"You wish--you were--his daughter? Do you realize what you are saying?"
Then he went on brokenly: "_Don't_, Patricia, girl--for God's sake don't
tempt me to do evil that good may come! Can't you understand how I am
driven to do this thing--how every fibre of me is rebelling against the
savage necessity? God knows, I'd give anything I am or hope to be if the
necessity could be wiped out!"
Instantly she changed her attack.
"But I say you can not do it. You are a brave man, Evan; I know, because
I have seen you tried. You mustn't turn cowardly now."
"Nor shall I!" he countered quickly. "But I don't understand."
"Don't you? Isn't it cowardly to strike this cruel blow in the dark? You
_can't_ do this thing without giving your father the warning that you
would give your bitterest enemy--you simply can't, and still be the man
I have known and l--liked for two whole years!"
"Father's going to Wartrace this afternoon is merely an added twist of
the thumb-screws," he protested in fresh wretchedness.
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