termined on a new line. He put down his hat and
umbrella, rested his hands on his hips, and regarded Ann Veronica
firmly.

"Now," he said, quietly, "it's time we stopped this nonsense."

Ann Veronica was about to reply, when he went on, with a still more
deadly quiet: "I am not here to bandy words with you. Let us have no
more of this humbug. You are to come home."

"I thought I explained--"

"I don't think you can have heard me," said her father; "I have told you
to come home."

"I thought I explained--"

"Come home!"

Ann Veronica shrugged her shoulders.

"Very well," said her father.

"I think this ends the business," he said, turning to his sister.

"It's not for us to supplicate any more. She must learn wisdom--as God
pleases."

"But, my dear Peter!" said Miss Stanley.

"No," said her brother, conclusively, "it's not for a parent to go on
persuading a child."

Miss Stanley rose and regarded Ann Veronica fixedly. The girl stood with
her hands behind her back, sulky, resolute, and intelligent, a strand
of her black hair over one eye and looking more than usually
delicate-featured, and more than ever like an obdurate child.

"She doesn't know."

"She does."

"I can't imagine what makes you fly out against everything like this,"
said Miss Stanley to her niece.

"What is the good of talking?" said her brother. "She must go her own
way. A man's children nowadays are not his own. That's the fact of the
matter. Their minds are turned against him.... Rubbishy novels and
pernicious rascals. We can't even protect them from themselves."

An immense gulf seemed to open between father and daughter as he said
these words.

"I don't see," gasped Ann Veronica, "why parents and children...
shouldn't be friends."

"Friends!" said her father. "When we see you going through disobedience
to the devil! Come, Molly, she must go her own way. I've tried to use my
authority. And she defies me. What more is there to be said? She defies
me!"

It was extraordinary. Ann Veronica felt suddenly an effect of tremendous
pathos; she would have given anything to have been able to frame and
make some appeal, some utterance that should bridge this bottomless
chasm that had opened between her and her father, and she could find
nothing whatever to say that was in the least sincere and appealing.

"Father," she cried, "I have to live!"

He misunderstood her. "That," he said, grimly, with his hand on the
door-handle, "must b