As a Man Lives by E. Phillips Oppenheim — Read

I BELIEVE that I took off my clothes and made some pretence of going to bed, but in my memory those long hours between the time when I left my father in the study and the dawn seems like one interminable nightmare.

Yet towards morning I must have slept, for my room was full of sunlight when a soft knocking at the door awakened me. Our trim little housemaid entered with a note; the address was in my father's handwriting. I sat up in bed and tore open the envelope eagerly. Something seemed to tell me even before I glanced at its contents that the thing I dreaded was coming to pass. This is what I read.