When he returned to the house shortly before nine from his session with Dr. Bennington, it was with the knowledge that another great moment was in prospect.  He took a few turns up and down the room before he rang for the butler to tell Jack that he had come in.  Then he placed a chair near the desk, where its occupant would sit facing him.  After he sat down he moved the desk lamp, which was the only light in the room, so that its rays fell on the back of the chair and left his own face in shadow—­a precaution which he had taken on many other occasions in adroitness of stage management.  He drew from the humidor drawer of his desk a box of the long cigars with blunt ends which need no encircling gilt band in praise of their quality.

As Jack entered, the father welcomed him with a warm, paternal smile.  And be it remembered that John Wingfield, Sr. could smile most pleasantly, and he knew the value of his smile.  Jack answered the smile with one of his own, a little wan, a little subdued, yet enlivening under the glow of his father’s evident happiness at seeing him.  The father, who had transgressed the rules of longevity by taking a second cigar after dinner, now pushed the box across the desk to his son.  Jack said that he would “roll one”; he did not care to smoke much.  He produced a small package of flake tobacco and a packet of rice paper and with a deftness that was like sleight of hand made a cigarette without spilling a single flake.  He had not always chosen the “makings” in place of private stock Havanas, but it seemed to suit his mood to-night.

“That is one of the things you learned in the West,” the father observed affably, to break the ice.

“I can do them with one hand,” Jack answered.  “But you are likely to have an overflow—­which is all right when you have the whole desert for the litter.  Besides, in a library it would have the effect of gallery play, I fear.”

He was seated in a way that revealed all the supple lines of his figure.  However relaxed his attitude before his father, it was always suggestive of latent strength, appealing at once to paternal pride and paternal uncertainty as to what course the strength would take.  His face under the light of the lamp was boyish and singularly without trace of guile.

The father struck a match and held it to light his son’s cigarette; another habit of his which he had found flattering to men who were brought into the library for conference.  Jack took a puff slowly and, after a time, another puff, and then dropped the cigarette on the ash receiver as much as to say that he had smoked enough.  Something told John Wingfield, Sr. that this was to be a long interview and in no way hurried, as he saw the smile dying on the son’s lips and misery coming into the son’s eyes.

“These last two days have been pretty poignant for me,” Jack began, in a simple, outright fashion; “and only half an hour ago I got this.  It was hard to resist taking the first train West.”  He drew a telegram from his pocket and handed it to his father.