"You have them," Ellen whispered, and cleared her voice and repeated more loudly, "You have them."
"Where?"
They were before him. She moved to the desk and touched them. He drew them from under her throbbing finger-tips. He turned them upside down, insultingly, as his son's eyes rested on them.
"You want to know how much I know, do you?"
"No, father."
"That's what you asked."
"It's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
Jay couldn't tell him.
Ellen Powell was standing near his father. Why did she? Why didn't she leave the room? Jay glanced at her and saw her whiter, even, than before; and her eyes so big and gray. She had read the telegrams, of course; they had come first to her. She had learned all about him.
He had begun to feel as though those telegrams told what he had done. He looked away from her, biting his lips. He was sick, sick again. He might almost as well be guilty. He had not realized it would be like this. Why didn't she leave the room?
"Do you deny," demanded his father, "any of this?"
"No," said Jay. It was his chance to see the telegrams but, unthinking, he had passed it.
"How old is the girl?"
"Lida?"
"Have you others?"
"Others," cried Jay; he could cast off that. "No: no, father."
