outside something vital, which removed her, in fact, to immeasurable
distances. And, in fact, Maria had a feeling which never afterwards
wholly left her, of being outside the love of life in which she had
hitherto dwelt with confidence.

"Maybe you would like it, dear," Harry said, feebly.

"I will go," Maria said, in a choking voice. Then she turned without
another word and went out of the room, up-stairs to her own little
chamber. When there she sat down beside the window. She did not
think. She did not seem to feel her hands and feet. It was as if she
had fallen from a height. The realization that her father and his new
wife wanted to send her away, that she was not wanted in her home,
stunned her.

But in a moment the door was flung open and her father entered. He
knelt down beside Maria and pulled her head to his shoulder and
kissed her, and she felt with a sort of dull wonder his face damp
against her own.

"Father's little girl!" said Harry. "Father's own little girl!
Father's blessing! Did she think he wanted to send her away? I rather
guess he didn't. How would father get along without his own precious
baby, when he came home at night. She shan't go one step. She needn't
fret a bit about it."

Maria turned and regarded him with a frozen look still on her face.
"It was She that wanted me to go?" she said, interrogatively.

"She thought maybe it would be best for you, darling," said Harry.
"She means to do right by you, Maria; you must try to think so."

Maria said nothing.

"But father isn't going to let you go," said Harry. "He can't do
without his little girl."

Then Maria's strange calm broke up. She clung, weeping, to her
father, as if he were her only stay. Harry continued to soothe her.

"Father's blessing!" he whispered in her ear. "She was the best
little girl that ever was. She is just like her own dear mother."

"I wish mother was back," Maria whispered, her whisper stifled
against his ear.

"Oh, my God, so do I!" Harry said, with a half sob. For the minute
the true significance of his position overwhelmed him. He felt a
regret, a remembrance, that was a passion. He realized, with no
disguise, what it all meant: that he a man with the weakness of a
child in the hands of a masterly woman, had formerly been in the
leading-strings of love for himself, for his own best good, whereas
he was now in the grasp of the self-love of another who cared for him
only as he promoted her own interests.