Dan had imagined that
Allen was content to play at being in love; that it satisfied the
romantic strain in him, just as his idealization of the Great Experiment
and its actors expressed and satisfied his patriotic feelings. The news
that he had come to terms of marriage with Marian was in all the
circumstances dismaying, and opened many dark prospects. Allen stood at
the window staring across the roofs beyond. He whirled round as Dan
addressed him.
"Have you spoken to Mr. Bassett? You know that will be the first thing,
Allen."
"That's exactly what I want you to help me about? He's at Waupegan now,
and of course I've got to see him. But you know this row between him and
dad makes it hard. You know dad would do anything in the world for
me--dear old dad! Of course I've told _him_. And you'd be surprised to
see the way he took it. You know people don't know dad the way I do.
They think he's just a rough old chap, without any fine feeling about
anything. And mother and the girls leaving him that way has hurt him; it
hurts him a whole lot. And when I told him last night, up at that big
hollow cave of a house, how happy I was and all that, it broke him all
up. He cried, you know--dad cried!"
The thought of Edward G. Thatcher in tears failed to arrest the dark
apprehensions that tramped harshly through Dan's mind. As for Bassett,
Dan recalled his quondam chief's occasional flings at Allen, whom the
senator from Fraser had regarded as a spoiled and erratic but innocuous
trifler.
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