“I’m not afraid of that.”

“Then I am; so you’d better stay at home.”

He wheeled from her as sharply as he had turned to confront her, striding off toward a wild border, where he tried to conceal the extent to which he was ashamed of his ill temper by pretending to be engrossed in the efforts of a bee to work its way into a blue cowl of monk’s-hood.  When he looked around again she was still standing where he had left her, her eyes clouded by an expression of wondering pain that smote him to the heart.

Had he possessed sufficient mastery of himself he would have gone back and begged her pardon, and sent her away to enjoy herself.  It was what he wanted to do; but the tension of his nerves seemed to get relief from the innocent thing’s suffering.  The very fact that her pretty little face was set with his own obstinacy of self-will, while behind it her spirit was rising against this capricious tyranny, goaded him into persistence.  He remembered how often Diane had told him that Dorothea could be neither led nor driven; she could only be “managed”; but he would show Diane, he would show himself, that she could be both driven and led, and that “management” should go the way of the wall-fruit and the roses.

As, recrossing the lawn, he made as though he would pass her without further words, he was an excellent illustration of the degree to which the adult man of the world, capable of taking an important part among his fellow-men, can be, at times, nothing but an overgrown infant.  It was not surprising, however, that Dorothea should not see this aspect of his personality, or look upon his commands as other than those of an unreasonable despotism.

“Father,” she said, “I can’t go on living like this.”

“Living like what?”

“Living as we’ve lived all this summer.”

“What’s the matter with the summer?  It’s like any other summer, isn’t it?”

“The summer may be like any other summer; but you’re not like yourself.  I do everything I can to please you, but—­”

“You needn’t do anything to please me but what you’re told.”

“I always do what I’m told—­when you tell me; but you only tell me by fits and starts.”

“Then, I tell you now:  you’re not to go to the Thoroughgoods’.”

“But they expect me.  I said I’d go to lunch.  They’ll think it very strange if I don’t.”

“They’ll think what they please.  It’s enough for you to know what I think.”

“But that’s just what I don’t know.  Ever since Diane went away—­”

“Stop that!  I’ve forbidden you to speak—­”

“But you can’t forbid me to think; and I think till I’m utterly bewildered.  You don’t explain anything to me.  You haven’t even told me why she went away.  If I ask a question you won’t answer it.”

“What’s necessary for you to know, you can depend on me to tell you.  Anything I don’t explain to you, you may dismiss from your mind.”