ou only thought of yourself.
Brought up as you have been, a Catholic--"

"My sins, father, lie between God and myself. What I come for is to beg
forgiveness for the wrong I did you."

He did not answer, but he seemed to acquiesce, and it was a relief to
her to feel that it was not the moral question that divided them;
convention had forced him to lay some stress upon it, but clearly what
rankled in his heart, and prevented him from taking her in his arms, was
a jealous, purely human feud. This she felt she could throw herself
against and overpower.

"Father, you must forgive me, we are all in all to each other; nothing
can change that. Ever since mother's death--you remember when the nurse
told us all was over--ever since I've felt that we were in some strange
way dependent on each other. Our love for each other is the one
unalterable thing. My music you taught me; the first songs I sang were
at your concerts, and now that we have both succeeded--you with
Palestrina, and I with Wagner--we must needs be aliens. Father, can't
you see that that can never be? if you don't you do not love me as I do
you. You're still thinking that I left you. Of course, it was very
wrong, but has that changed anything? Father, tell me, tell me, unless
you want to kill me, that you do not believe that I love you less."

The wonder of the scene she was acting--she never admitted she acted;
she lived through scenes, whether fictitious or real--quickened in her;
it was the long-expected scene, the scene in the third act of the
"Valkyrie" which she had always played while divining the true scene
which she would be called upon to play one day. It seemed to her that
she stood on the verge of all her future--the mystery of the abyss
gathered behind her eyes; she threw herself at her father's feet, and
the celebrated phrase, so plaintive, so full of intercession, broke from
her lips, "Was the rebel act so full of shame that her rebellion is so
shamefully scourged? Was my offence so deep in disgrace that thou dost
plan so deep a disgrace for me? Was this my crime so dark with dishonour
that it henceforth robs me of all honour? Oh tell me, father; look in
mine eyes." She heard the swelling harmony, every chord, the note that
gave her the note she was to sing. She was carried down like a drowning
one into a dim world of sub-conscious being; and in this half life all
that was most true in her seemed to rise like a star and shine forth,
while all that