Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/352

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342
THE BREATH OF SCANDAL

it? It's not like any other house in the world when it's home; your father's not like any other man; nor your mother like any other woman. When they are, it's gone like that, home; and you can't come back to it just by opening a door of a house and stepping in, can you?"

He cleared his throat and after a moment said: "No. This isn't—home, Marjorie; of course I know I can never make a house home for you again."

It caught her up with eyes suddenly filled and she seized his hands. "Father, oh father! I'd like to have it back! I'd come back home if I could!"

"I know, Margy," he said, "I know; but we can't have—home." After a minute he told her. "I am going to arrange, in regard to your mother, for a decent and recognized separation. Whatever I personally do in the future—I don't know yet what that will be—at least will be openly done. You want to know that; I want you to."

"Yes," she said. "That's just what I wanted to know." And she kissed him, and he went out.

He entered his room where was that chair of his—"father's chair"—which belonged to the days when Marjorie was born; and he felt that he would give anything to begin back there again when he first sat in that chair holding her. Then he felt he would give as much to be back where he was on that March night when she last put her arms about his neck and believed him not like any other man in the world, though he was going then to Sybil Russell.

In the afternoon Gregg telephoned that the county authorities had completed their inquiries and had found no basis for criminal proceedings in connection with Billy's death. Also Mr. Kemphill himself, of Billy's firm, had conferred with the State's attorney and was