you if you would condescend to accept it. It is not for me
to persuade you, but I can see and feel the truth. Till you bring
yourself to do that, your days will be blighted,--and so will mine.
You have made one great mistake in life. Stop a moment. I do not
speak often, but I wish you to listen to me now. Such mistakes do
generally produce misery and ruin to all who are concerned. With you
it chances that it may be otherwise. You can put your foot again upon
the firm ground and recover everything. Of course there must be a
struggle. One person has to struggle with circumstances, another
with his foes, and a third with his own feelings. I can understand
that there should be such a struggle with you; but it ought to be
made. You ought to be brave enough and strong enough to conquer your
regrets, and to begin again. In no other way can you do anything
for me or for yourself. To talk of going away is childish nonsense.
Whither would you go? I shall not urge you any more, but I would not
have you talk to me in that way." Then he got up and left the room
and the house, and went down to his club,--in order that she might
think of what he had said in solitude.

And she did think of it;--but still continually with an assurance to
herself that her father did not understand her feelings. The career
of which he spoke was no doubt open to her, but she could not regard
it as that which it was proper that she should fulfil, as he did.
When she told her lover that she had lain among the pots till she
was black and defiled, she expressed in the strongest language that
which was her real conviction. He did not think her to have been
defiled,--or at any rate thought that she might again bear the wings
of a dove; but she felt it, and therefore knew herself to be unfit.
She had said it all to her lover in the strongest words she could
find, but she could not repeat them to her father. The next morning
when he came into the parlour where she was already sitting, she
looked up at him almost reproachfully. Did he think that a woman was
a piece of furniture which you can mend, and revarnish, and fit out
with new ornaments, and then send out for use, second-hand indeed,
but for all purposes as good as new?

Then, while she was in this frame of mind, Everett came in upon her
unawares, and with his almost boisterous happiness succeeded for a
while in changing the current of her thoughts. He was of course now
uppermost in his own thoughts. The la