There was swift surprise in her face. She seemed dumbfounded, and then she said: "Denzil! He's all right, but he does not like your Mr. Tarboe."
"My Mr. Tarboe! Where do I come in?"
"Well, he's got what you ought to have had," was the reply. "What you would have had, weren't you a foolish fellow."
"I still don't understand how he is my Mr. Tarboe."
"Well, he wouldn't have been in your father's life if it weren't for you; if you had done what your father wished you to do, had--"
"Had sold myself for gold--my freedom, my health, everything to help my father's business! I don't see why he should expect that what he's doing some one else should do--"
"That Belloc would do, that Belloc and Fabian would do," said the girl.
"Yes, that's it--what they two would do. There's no genius in it, though my father comes as near being a genius as any man alive. But there's a screw loose somewhere.... It wasn't good enough for me. It didn't give me a chance--in things that are of the mind, the spirit--my particular gifts, whatever they are. They would have chafed against that life."
"In other words, you're a genius, which your father isn't," the girl said almost sarcastically.
A disturbed look came into Carnac's eyes. "I'd have liked my father to be a genius. Then we'd have hit it off together. I don't ever feel the things he does are the things I want to do; or the things he says are those I'd like to say. He's a strange man. He lives alone. He never was really near Fabian or me. We were his sons, but though Fabian is a little bit like him in appearance, I'm not, and never was. I always feel that--" He paused, and she took up the tale: "That he wasn't the father you'd have made for yourself, eh!"
"I suppose that's it. Conceit, ain't it? Perhaps the facts are, I'm one of the most useless people that ever wore a coat. Perhaps the things I do aren't going to live beyond me."
"It seems as though your father's business is going to live after him, doesn't it?" the girl asked mockingly. "Where are you going now?" she added.
"Well, I'm going to take you home," he said, as he turned and walked by her side down the hill.
"Denzil will be glad to see you. He almost thinks I'm a curse."