All at once, on the platform, as he spoke, when his eyes saw the faces of Carnac and his mother the catastrophe stunned him like a huge engine of war.

There had come to him at last a sense of duty where Alma Grier was concerned.

She was nearly fifty years of age, and he was fifty-nine; she was a widow with this world's goods; she had been to him how near and dear! for a brief hour, and then--no more.

He knew the boy was his son, because he saw his own face, as it had been in his youth, though his mother's look was also there-transforming, illumining.
He had a pang as he saw the two at the close of his meeting filtering out into the great retort of the world.

Then it was that he had the impulse to go to the woman's home, express his sorrow, and in some small sense wipe out his wrong by offering her marriage.