eside Nedda, and said:

"My darling!"

She leaned her forehead against his arm and sobbed the more.

Felix waited, patting her far shoulder gently.

He had often dealt with such situations in his books, and now that
one had come true was completely at a loss. He could not even begin to
remember what was usually said or done, and he only made little soothing
noises.

To Nedda this tenderness brought a sudden sharp sense of guilt and
yearning. She began:

"It's not because of that I'm crying, Dad, but I want you to know that
Derek and I are in love."

The words: 'You! What! In those few days!' rose, and got as far as
Felix's teeth; he swallowed them and went on patting her shoulder. Nedda
in love! He felt blank and ashy. That special feeling of owning her
more than any one else, which was so warming and delightful, so really
precious--it would be gone! What right had she to take it from him,
thus, without warning! Then he remembered how odious he had always said
the elderly were, to spoke the wheels of youth, and managed to murmur:

"Good luck to you, my pretty!"

He said it, conscious that a father ought to be saying:

'You're much too young, and he's your cousin!' But what a father ought
to say appeared to him just then both sensible and ridiculous. Nedda
rubbed her cheek against his hand.

"It won't make any difference, Dad, I promise you!"

And Felix thought: 'Not to you, only to me!' But he said:

"Not a scrap, my love! What WERE you crying about?"

"About the world; it seems so heartless."

And she told him about the water that had run along the nose of the old
four-wheeler man.

But while he seemed to listen, Felix thought: 'I wish to God I were made
of leather; then I shouldn't feel as if I'd lost the warmth inside me.
I mustn't let her see. Fathers ARE queer--I always suspected that. There
goes my work for a good week!' Then he answered:

"No, my dear, the world is not heartless; it's only arranged according
to certain necessary contraries: No pain, no pleasure; no dark, no
light, and the rest of it. If you think, it couldn't be arranged
differently."

As he spoke a blackbird came running with a chuckle from underneath
the berberis, looked at them with alarm, and ran back. Nedda raised her
face.

"Dad, I mean to do something with my life!"

Felix answered:

"Yes. That's right."

But long after Nedda had fallen into dreams that night, he lay awake,
with his left foot enclosed between