thing for her to leave uncompanied a parent with
such a face and such a manner? Yet if there was
much she neither knew nor dreamed of, it passed
between them at this very moment that he was quite
familiar with himself as the subject of such quan
daries. If he recognised his younger daughter's
happy aspect as a sensible value, he had from the
first still more exactly appraised his own. The great
wonder was not that in spite of everything his own
had helped him; the great wonder was that it hadn't
helped him more. However, it was, to its old,
eternal, recurrent tune, helping him all the while;
her drop into patience with him showed how it
was helping him at this moment. She saw the next
instant precisely the line he would take. " Do you
really ask me to believe you ve been making up your
mind to that?"

She had to consider her own line. " I don't think
I care, papa, what you believe. I never, for that
matter, think of you as believing anything; hardly
more," she permitted herself to add, " than I ever
think of you as yourself believed. I don't know
you, father, you see."

"And it's your idea that you may make that up?"

"Oh dear, no; not at all. That's no part of the
question. If I haven't understood you by this time,
I never shall, and it doesn't matter. It has seemed
to me that you may be lived with, but not that you
may be understood. Of course I ve not the least
idea how you get on."

[[13]]

p012 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p013w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p014

v?