ng."

"I put up seventy-five jars of strawberries."

"Well, the blackberries are coming along. I was always partial to
blackberries."

He sat there, bald, shrunken, yellow, as soulless as a steam engine, and
yet to Susan he represented a pitiless manifestation of destiny--of
those deaf, implacable forces by which the lives of men and women are
wrecked. He had the power to ruin her life, and yet he would never see
it because he had been born blind. That in his very blindness had lain
his strength, was a fact which, naturally enough, escaped her for the
moment. The one thought of which she was conscious was a fierce
resentment against life because such men possessed such power over
others.

"If you will lend me the money, I will pay it back to you as soon as I
can take a position," she said, almost passionately.

Something that was like the ghost of a twinkle appeared in his eyes, and
he let fall presently one of his rare pieces of humour.

"If you'd like a chance to repay me for your education," he said,
"there's your schooling at Miss Priscilla's still owing, and I'll take
it out in help about the housekeeping."

Then Susan went, because going in silence was the only way that she
could save the shreds of dignity which remained to her, and bending
forward, with a contented chuckle, Cyrus spat benevolently down upon the
miniature sunflowers.

In the half hour that followed he did not think of his daughter. From
long discipline his mind had fallen out of the habit of thinking of
people except in their relation to the single vital interest of his
life, and this interest was not fatherhood. Susan was an incident--a
less annoying incident, it is true, than Belinda--but still an incident.
An inherent contempt for women, due partly to qualities of temperament
and partly to the accident of a disillusioning marriage, made him
address them always as if he were speaking from a platform. And, as is
often the case with men of cold-blooded sensuality, women, from Belinda
downward, had taken their revenge upon him.

The front door-bell jangled suddenly, and a little later he heard a
springy step passing along the hall. Then the green lattice door of the
porch opened, and the face of Mrs. Peachey, wearing the look of
unnatural pleasantness which becomes fixed on the features of persons
who spend their lives making the best of things, appeared in the spot
where Susan had been half an hour before. She had trained her lips to
s