"Rich?" Kirk repeated.
"Rich," Ruth assured him.
"I don't understand."
Ruth's smile faded.
"Poor father----"
"Your father?"
"He died just after you sailed. Just before Bill got ill." She gave a
little sigh. "Kirk, how odd life is!"
"But-----"
"It was terrible. It was some kind of a stroke. He had been working too
hard and taking no exercise. You know when he sent Steve away that time
he didn't engage anybody else in his place. He went back to his old way
of living, which the doctor had warned him against. He worked and
worked, until one day, Bailey says, he fainted at the office. They
brought him home, and he just went out like a burned-out candle. I--I
went to him, but for a long time he wouldn't see me.
"Oh, Kirk, the hours I spent in the library hoping that he would let me
come to him! But he never did till right at the end. Then I went up,
and he was dying. He couldn't speak. I don't know now how he felt
toward me at the last. I kissed him. He was all shrunk to nothing. I
had a horrible feeling that I had never been a real daughter to him.
But--but--you know, he made it difficult, awfully difficult. And then
he died; Bailey was on one side of the bed and I was on the other, and
the nurse and the doctor were whispering outside the door. I could hear
them through the transom."
She slipped her hand into Kirk's and sat silent while the car slid into
the traffic of Fifth Avenue.
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