"What is it?" he asked.
"He is begging to go to your bed," the woman answered, peevishly. "You've spoiled him, Mr. Mostyn. He wants to do it every night. He is getting worse and worse."
A thrill of delight, yearning delight, passed over the father. He stood silent for a moment, ashamed to have even the black servant suspect what he so keenly desired.
"Daddy, Dick wants you," a voice soft, tremulous, and unspeakably appealing came from the little bed.
"Hush, and go to sleep!" the nurse called out. "You are a bad boy, keeping us awake like this."
"No, let him come," Mostyn said, in a voice which was husky, and shook against his will. "Come, Dick!"
The little white-robed form slid eagerly from the bed and fairly ran to the arms which were hungrily outstretched. With the soft body against his breast, a confident arm about his neck, the father bore him to his room and put him down on the back side of the wide bed.
"Now you will sleep, won't you?" he said, his voice exultantly tender.
"Yes, Daddy." Dick stretched his pretty legs out straight. Silence filled the room; the mystic rays of moonlight falling in at the window seemed to bring with them the despondent murmur of the city outside. The deep, fragrant breathing of the child soon showed that he was asleep. Cautiously Mostyn propped himself up on his elbow and looked into the placid face. "He has my brow," he mused, bitterly; "my hands; my ears; my long ringers, with their curving nails; my slender ankles and high-instepped feet; and, my God! he has my telltale sensual lips. Here am I in the throes of a hell produced by infinite laws. What is to prevent him--the helpless replica of myself--from taking the way I took? The edge of the alluring abyss will crumble under his blind tread as it crumbled under mine, and this--this--this cloying horror which is on me to-night may be my gift to him--for whose sake I would die--yes, die!"
Silently Mostyn left the bed and took a seat on the broad sill of one of the windows overlooking the lawn.
"What will be the end?" he asked himself. "It can't go on like this. I am not man enough to stand it. If I were not afraid of death, I would --no, I wouldn't"--he glanced at the bed--"I am responsible for his being here. He is the flower of my corruption. God may desert him, but I won't. I will protect him, love him, pity him, care for him to the end."