just inside the door, by a window. He was in a rocking-chair, and
his hands lay heavily against the back of it. He had a blanket about him,
as if he were cold. He looked at her with a strange lack of responsiveness
when she entered the room.

"I got your message," she said affectionately. "I am glad you let me know
you weren't feeling very well." She touched his cheeks with her hands and
kissed him. "You _are_ cold," she added, as if she were answering the
question that had occurred to her at sight of the blanket.

She sat down near him, waiting for him to speak. He would have a great
many things to say to her, she thought. But he regarded her almost
stolidly.

"Your marriage seems to have changed you," he said finally.

"For the better, I hope!"

"Well, that's according to the way you look at it. Cutting your old father
cold isn't for the better, as far as I can see."

She did not resent the ungenerous use of that phrase, "old father," though
she could not help remembering that he was still under fifty, and that he
looked young for his years. It was just one of his mannerisms in
speaking.

"I didn't do that, you know," she said. "Being married seems a wonderful
adventure. There is so much that is strange for you to get used to. But I
didn't forget you. You've seen Antonia--occasionally...?"

The man moved his head so that it lay on one side against the chair-back.
"I thought you'd throw that up to me," he complained.

"Father!" she remonstrated. She was deeply wounded. It had not been her
father's way to make baseless, unjust charges against her. Shiftless and
blind he had been; but there had been a geniality about him which had
softened his faults to one who loved him.

"Well, never mind," he said, in a less bitter tone. And she waited, hoping
he would think of friendlier words to speak, now that his resentment had
been voiced.

But he seemed ill at ease in her presence now. She might have been a
stranger to him. She looked about her with a certain fond expression which
speedily faded. Somehow the old things reminded her only of unhappiness.
They were meaner than she had supposed them to be. Their influence over
her was gone.

She brought her gaze back to her father. He had closed his eyes as if he
were weary; yet she discerned in the lines of his face a hard fixity which
troubled her, alarmed her. Though his eyes were closed he did not present
a reposeful aspect. There was something really sinister abo