w can you speak like that? You shock me very much."

She regretted her indiscretion, and feared she had raised the moral
question; but the taunt that it was he and not she that was acting had
sunk into his heart, and the truth of it overcame him. It was he who had
been acting. He had pretended an anger which he did not feel, and it was
quite true that, whatever she did, he could not really feel anger
against her. She was shrined in his heart, the dream of his whole life.
He could feel anger against himself, but not against her. She was right.
He must forgive her, for how could he live without her? Into what
dissimulation he had been foolishly ensnared! In these convictions which
broke like rockets in his heart and brain, spreading a strange
illumination in much darkness, he saw her beauty and sex idealised, and
in the vision were the eyes and pallor of the dead wife, and all the
yearning and aspiration of his own life seemed reflected back in this
fair, oval face, lit with luminous, eager eyes, and in the tangle of
gold hair fallen about her ears, and thrown back hastily with long
fingers; and the wonder of her sex in the world seemed to shed a light
on distant horizons, and he understood the strangeness of the common
event of father and daughter standing face to face, divided, or
seemingly divided, by the mystery of the passion of which all things are
made. His own sins were remembered. They fell like soft fire breaking in
a dark sky, and his last sensation in the whirl of complex, diffused and
passing sensations was the thrill of terror at the little while
remaining to him wherein he might love her. A few years at most! His
eyes told her what was happening in his heart, and with that beautiful
movement of rapture so natural to her, she threw herself into his arms.

"I knew, father, dear, that you'd forgive me in the end. It was
impossible to think of two like us living and dying in alienation. I
should have killed myself, and you, dear, you would have died of grief.
But I dreaded this first meeting. I had thought of it too much, and, as
I told you, I had acted it so often."

"Have I been so severe with you, Evelyn, that you should dread me?"

"No, darling, but, of course, I've behaved--there's no use talking about
it any more. But you could never have been really in doubt that a lover
could ever change my love for you. Owen--I mustn't speak about him, only
I wish you to understand that I've never ceased to think of