Behind his own door, as he thought it over, the interview was about
as unsatisfactory as an interview could be. She had kept it in her
own hands, left him no opening for the eloquent appeal he had planned
or the severe scolding she deserved. He wished he dared go back and
put his arms about her and tell her how deeply he loved her. But he
lacked the courage; she wouldn’t understand it. It was the cruelest of
ironies that he dare not knock at his child’s door to tell her how
precious she was to him.
That was the trouble--he didn’t know how to make her understand! As he
paced the floor, he wondered whether anyone in all the world had ever
loved him! Yes, there was Marian Storrs; and, again, the woman who had
been his wife. Beyond question each had, in her own way, loved him; but
both were gathered into the great company of the dead. That question,
as to whether anyone had ever loved him, reversed itself: in the whole
course of his life had he, Franklin Mills, ever unselfishly loved
anyone? This was the most disagreeable question that had forced itself
upon Franklin Mills’s attention in a long time. As he tried to go to
sleep it took countless forms in the dark, till the room danced with
interrogation marks.
He turned on the lights and got up. After moving about restlessly for
a time he found himself staring at his reflection in the panel mirror
in the bathroom door. It seemed to him that the shadow in the glass was
not himself but the phantom of a man he had never known.