There grew in him that day a reverence for her, determined as he was to bring into her life by his wealth and devotion everything of good. His loving plans for her forming in his brain somewhat chaotic and very much fevered, brought him nearer than he had ever been before to the picture of his mother. His father it wasn’t easy for Dan to think of in connection with the actress. He didn’t dare to dwell on the subject, but he had never known his mother, and that pale ideal he could create as he would. In thinking of her he saw only tenderness for Letty Lane—only love; and in his room the night after the row on the river, the night after the long idyl in the sunset-room of the inn, something like a prayer came to his young lips, and, when its short form was finished, a smile brought it to an end as he remembered the line in Letty Lane’s own opera:
“She will teach you how to pray in an Eastern form of prayer.”
The ring he had given the Duchess of Breakwater had been her own choice, a ruby. He had asked her, through Galorey, to keep it and to wear it later, when she could think of him kindly, in an ornament of some kind or another. The duchess had not refused. The ring he bought for Letty Lane, although there was no engagement announced between them, was the largest, purest diamond he could _with decency_ ask her to put on her hand! It sparkled like a great drop of clear water from some fountain on a magic continent. In another shop strands of pink coral set through with diamonds caught his fancy and he bought her yards of them, ropes of them, smiling to think how his boyhood’s dreams were come true.
He never saw Ruggles except at meals, hardly spoke to the poor man at all, and the boy’s absorbed face, his state of mind, made the older man feel like death. He repeated to himself that he was too late—too late, and usually wound up his reflections by ejaculating:
“Gosh almighty, I’m glad I haven’t got a son!”
He felt as he waited for her in that flower-filled room, for she had recovered from her distaste for flowers, as he glanced at the photographs of women like herself in costumes more or less frank, more or less vulgar, he felt as though he wanted to knock down the walls and let in a big view of the West—of Montana—of the hills. With such a setting he thought he could better talk with the lady whom he had come to see.
