“Why can’t you be human and understanding where my feelings are concerned? Why can’t you and Alice be tolerant of what I love?”

Alice’s voice shot out like an arrow.

“Love? Sickening passion!”

Wayne shook his head hopelessly.

Alice worried him like a dog with a bone.

“She isn’t expecting you to enter into the holy bonds of matrimony, is she?”

Wayne faced them in a last stand.

“I’m demanding the right to love the object that makes for my peace of mind and soul, and I do not consider it any of your business.”

“My boy,” his father interrupted, in a kindly tone, “whatever the color of your views, the fact remains that a house divided against itself cannot stand. You are in the grip of a love affair that is shocking, particularly to your sister. Your enslavement to this woman is breaking down your loyalty to your family. Common sense demands that you give up this woman who is not worthy of your affection.”

“She is, I tell you, Father. She is!”

“Loving her, you are hardly an unbiased judge. The question is, will you leave her, and get your mind clear for business again?”

Wayne came to a final decision.

“No, Father, I’m bored stupid with the swank of our millions. My mind’s made up. I want this girl who is just natural and normal, and I’m going to have her.”

A tomb-like silence filled the library for a moment, then Alice sarcastically flung at him,

“Then, Wayne, you’ve decided to defy common sense and disgrace your family for this natural, normal, girl?”

“Yes—in spite of all the insults you heap on her.” He took a few steps, then turned with unseeing eyes. “I’m going—I’m going,” he murmured as he swung out through the door.

Baldwin Senior and Alice faced each other in silence. His eyes dropped before her steady, unrelenting gaze.

“What are we to do now?” he asked, helplessly.

A thin smile crossed Alice’s face.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing now. I have a premonition—just a premonition—that we shan’t have to do anything.”

Wayne left his father’s house with an intense loathing for all it represented. They had tried to make him feel like a bad little boy who needed a spanking. He resented the imputation that he was incapable of arranging his own life. They had besmirched Babe’s character, and that hurt him the most. Try as he would to exonerate her, he was forced to admit that there must be some truth in what they had told him.