"Helpless, in jail, with no one to think of, nothing to look forward to,
but my daughter. And then when they let me out at last I find her
gone--for it amounts to this. Sold. Because you've sold yourself; you
know you have."
With his round unmoved face, a lot of fine white hair waving in the wind-
eddies of the spanker, his glance levelled over the sea he seemed to be
addressing the universe across her reclining form. She would protest
sometimes.
"I wish you would not talk like this, papa. You are only tormenting me,
and tormenting yourself."
"Yes, I am tormented enough," he admitted meaningly. But it was not
talking about it that tormented him. It was thinking of it. And to sit
and look at it was worse for him than it possibly could have been for her
to go and give herself up, bad as that must have been.
"For of course you suffered. Don't tell me you didn't? You must have."
She had renounced very soon all attempts at protests. It was useless. It
might have made things worse; and she did not want to quarrel with her
father, the only human being that really cared for her, absolutely,
evidently, completely--to the end.
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