s it?"

"Because it puzzles me. Why do I mind things more now than I did? I
used to feel quite casual about father's oddities. They never seemed to
exactly matter. But now," naively, "I would so much like to have a
father like other people."

"That is more normal, too."

"I suppose," she went on, as if following her own thoughts, "what Li Ho
calls the moon-devil is really a disease. Have you ever told Dr. John
about father, Benis? What did he say?" The professor fidgeted. "Oh,
nothing much. He couldn't, you know, without more data. But he thinks
his periodical spells may be a kind of masked epilepsy. There are some
symptoms which look like it. The way the attacks come on, with
restlessness and that peculiar steely look in the eye, the unreasoning
anger and especially the--er--general indications." The professor came
to a stammering end, suddenly remembering that she did not know that
last and worst of the moon-devil symptoms.

"It is hereditary, of course," said Desire calmly.

The professor jumped.

"My dear girl! What an idea."

"An idea which I could not very well escape. All these things tend to
transmit themselves, do they not? Only not necessarily so. I seem to
have escaped."

"Yes," shortly. "Surely you have never supposed--"

"No. I haven't. That's the odd part of it. I have never been the least
bit afraid. Perhaps it's because I have never felt that I have anything
at all in common with father. Or it may be because I have never faced
facts. I don't know. Even now, when I am facing facts, they do not seem
really to touch me. I never pretended to understand father. He seemed
like two or three people, all strangers. Sometimes he was just a rather
sly old man full of schemes for getting money without working for it,
and very clever and astute. Sometimes he seemed a student and a
scholar--this was his best mood. It was during this phase that he wrote
his scientific articles and taught me all that I know. His own
knowledge seemed to be an orderly confusion o>f all kinds of things.
And he could be intensely interesting when he chose. In those moods he
treated me with a certain courtesy which may have been a remnant of an
earlier manner. But it never lasted long."

"And the other mood--the third one?"

"Oh, that Well, that was the bad mood. If it is a disease he was not
responsible. So' we won't talk of it." Desire's lips tightened. "He
usually went away in the hills when the restlessness came on. And I