"Isn't it something, then, that I gave you a father with a _mind_? And
if you think you've been sinned against, think of _me_! Sin! You call it
_sin_! Well, isn't it _anything at all_ that by my 'sin' my son's blood
came down to him _clean_? Tell me that!"
He shook himself, and his flame turned to sullenness.
"It's not so," he glowered.
All the girl in him, the poet, the hero-worshipping boy, rebelled. His
harassed eyes went to the wall beyond and the faces there, the ghosts of
the doomed, glorious, youth-ridden line, priceless possessions of his
dreams. He would not lose them: he refused to be robbed of a tragic
birthright. He wanted some gesture puissant enough to turn back and
blot out all that had been told him.
"It's not his!" he cried. And reaching out fiercely he dragged the
'cello away from the coffin's side. He stood for an instant at bay,
bitter, defiant.
"It's not his! It's mine! It's--it's--_ours!_"
And then he fled out into the dark of the entrance-hall and up the black
stairs. In his room there was no moonlight now, for the cloud ran over
the sky and the rain had come.
"It isn't so, it isn't so!" It was like a sob in his throat.
He struck on the full strings. And listening breathless through the
dying discord he heard the liquid whispers of the rain, nothing more. He
lashed with a wild bow, time and again. But something was broken,
something was lost: out of the surf of sound he could no longer fashion
the measure of marching feet.
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