effort where concentration was necessary, but otherwise gave no sign
that he heard her.

Sylvia watched him anxiously through the window. Presently she saw
him relax from his position of strained attention with a great sigh,
almost a groan, and lean back in his chair, covering his eyes with
his hands. When he took them down, his face had the aged, ravaged
expression of exhaustion which had so startled her on her arrival. Now
she felt none of her frightened revulsion, but only an aching pity
which sent her out to him in a rush, her arms outstretched, crying to
him brokenly that he still had his children who loved him more than
anything in the world.

For the first time in her life, her father repelled her, shrinking
away from her with a brusque, involuntary recoil that shocked her,
thrusting her arms roughly to one side, and rising up hastily to
retreat into the house. He said in a bitter, recriminating tone, "You
don't know what you are talking about," and left her standing there,
the tears frozen in her eyes. He went heavily upstairs to his study on
the top floor and locked the door. Sylvia heard the key turn. It shut
her into an intolerable solitude. She had not thought before that
anything could seem worse than the desolation of her mother's absence.

She felt a deathlike sinking of her heart. She was afraid of her
father, who no longer seemed her father, created to protect and
cherish her, but some maniac stranger. She felt an impulse like that
of a terrified child to run away, far away to some one who should
stand before her and bear the brunt. She started up from her chair
with panic haste, but the familiar room, saturated with recollections
of her mother's gallant spirit, stood about her like a wall, shutting
her in to the battle with her heart. Who was there to summon whom she
could endure as a spectator of her father's condition? Her mother's
empty chair stood opposite her, against the wall. She looked at it
fixedly; and drawing a long breath sat down quietly.

This act of courage brought a reward in the shape of a relaxation
of the clutch on her throat and about her heart. Her mother's wise
materialism came to her mind now and she made a heartsick resolve that
she would lead as physically normal a life as possible, working out of
doors, forcing herself to eat, and that, above all things, she would
henceforth deny herself the weakening luxury of tears. And yet but an
hour later, as she bent over her mother'