a little, but when she spoke it was clear. "Yes."

"Well then, you're a bigger fool than I should have ventured to suppose
you."

"Why so? You live. You flourish. You bloom."

"Ah, how you've all always hated me!" he murmured with a pensive gaze
again at the window.

"No one could be less of a mere cherished memory," she declared as if
she had not heard him. "You're an actual person, if there ever was one.
We agreed just now that you're beautiful. You strike me, you know,
as--in your own way--much more firm on your feet than I am. Don't put
it to me therefore as monstrous that the fact that we are, after all,
parent and child should at present in some manner count for us. My idea
has been that it should have some effect for each of us. I don't at
all, as I told you just now," she pursued, "make out your life; but
whatever it is I hereby offer you to accept it. And, on my side, I'll
do everything I can for you."

"I see," said Lionel Croy. Then, with the sound of extreme relevance,
"And what _can_ you?" She only, at this, hesitated, and he took up her
silence. "You can describe yourself--_to_ yourself--as, in a fine
flight, giving up your aunt for me; but what good, I should like to
know, would your fine flight do me?" As she still said nothing he
developed a little. "We're not possessed of so much, at this charming
pass, please to remember, as that we can afford not to take hold of any
perch held out to us. I like the way you talk, my dear, about 'giving
up!' One doesn't give up the use of a spoon because one's reduced to
living on broth. And your spoon, that is your aunt, please consider, is
partly mine as well." She rose now, as if in sight of the term of her
effort, in sight of the futility and the weariness of many things, and
moved back to the poor little glass with which she had communed before.
She retouched here again the poise of her hat, and this brought to her
father's lips another remark in which impatience, however, had already
been replaced by a funny flare of appreciation. "Oh, you're all right!
Don't muddle yourself up with _me!"_

His daughter turned round to him. "The condition Aunt Maud makes is
that I shall have absolutely nothing to do with you; never see you, nor
speak, nor write to you, never go near you nor make you a sign, nor
hold any sort of communication with you. What she requires is that you
shall simply cease to exist for me."

He had always seemed--it was one of the marks of what