mself was not capable.

"No," Mildred Caniper was saying, and by her tone she shifted the blame
from her husband to his children. The word acted as a full stop to her
confidences, and there was an uneasy pause.

"But tell us, please," Helen said, leaning forward.

"Oh, please," Rupert added.

Mildred Caniper smiled waveringly, between pride and pain. "I was only
going to tell you a little about him, but now I don't know that I can."
She swallowed hard. "I wanted you to know how gifted he was."

"How?" Rupert asked.

"He wrote," she said, defying their criticism of what they had not seen,
"but he destroyed all he did because he was never satisfied. I found
nothing--anywhere."

Here was a father whom Rupert could understand, and for the first time
he regretted not having known him; but to John it was foolishness for a
man to set his hand to work which was not good enough to stand. He must
content himself with a humbler job.

"He liked only the best," Mildred Caniper said, doing her duty by him,
and the next moment she caught the full shaft of Miriam's unwary glance
which was bright with the conviction that her father's desertion needed
no more explanation.

Mildred Caniper's mind registered the personal affront, and swept on to
its implication as rain sweeps up a valley. The result was darkness, and
as she sat straight and motionless in her chair, she seemed to herself
to struggle, for her soul sighted despair. Long ago, she had taken life
into her hands and used it roughly, and life was taking its slow
revenge. In the shuttered room by the sea, the dead man, deaf to the
words with which she had hurried to him, and here, in this house, the
eyes of Miriam announced her failure, yet to that cold clay and to this
living flesh she had been, and was, a power.

She dropped her hands limply. She was tired of this fictitious power;
she was almost ready to pretend no longer; and with that thought she
found herself being observed by Helen with a tenderness she was not
willing to endure. She spoke abruptly, resigning the pious task of
sweetening Philip Caniper's memory.

"Your father has left you each nearly a hundred pounds a year"--she
glanced at Miriam--"to be handed over when you have reached the age of
twenty-one."

There was a feeling that some one ought to thank him, but no one spoke,
and his children left the room with an unaccountable sense of guilt.

In the safety of the schoolroom Miriam's voice rose bitte