Buckham brought
it in in shaking fingers, and stood by, white and still, while he
opened it.
Clayton stood up. He was very white, but his voice was full and
strong.
"He is better, Buckham! Better!"
Suddenly Buckham was crying. His austere face was distorted, his
lean body trembling. Clayton put his arm around the bowed old
shoulders.
And in that moment, as they stood there, master and man, Clayton
Spencer had a flash of revelation. There was love and love. The
love of a man for a woman, and of a woman for a man, of a mother
for the child at her knee, of that child for its mother. But that
the great actuating motive of a man's maturity, of the middle span,
was vested along with his dreams, his pride and his love, in his son,
his man-child.
Buckham, carrying his coffee into the library somewhat later, found
him with his head down on his desk, and the cablegram clutched in
his outstretched hands. He tip-toed out, very quietly.
CHAPTER XLVIII
Clayton's first impulse was to take the cable to Natalie, to brush
aside the absurd defenses she had erected, and behind which she
cowered, terrified but obstinate.
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