“By getting her to do it of her own accord.”

“Could you promise me she would?”

“I couldn’t promise you anything at all.  I could only do my best, and see how she would respond to it.”

“She’s a very good little girl,” he hastened to declare.

“I’m sure of that.  Though I don’t know her well, I’ve seen her often enough to understand that whatever mistakes she may make, they are those of youth and independence.  She is only a motherless girl who has been allowed—­who, in a certain way, has been obliged—­to look after herself.  I’ve noticed that underneath her self-reliant manner she’s very much a child.”

“That’s true.”

“But I should never treat her as a child, except—­except in one way.”

“Which would be—?”

“To give her plenty of affection.”

“She’s always had that.”

“Yes, yours; she hasn’t had her mother’s.  Don’t think me cruel in saying it, but no girl can grow up nourished only by her father’s love, and not miss something that the good God intended her to have.  The reason women are so essential to babies and men is chiefly because of their faculty for understanding the inarticulate.  With all your daughter has had, there is one great thing that she hasn’t had; and if you had placed me near her, my idea, which I call vague, would have been—­as far as any one could do it now—­to supply her with some of that.”

Derek retreated again to the fireside, alarmed by a language suspiciously like that he had heard on other occasions concerning the motherless condition of his child.  Was it going to turn out that all women were alike?  There had been minutes during the last half-hour when, as he looked into Diane’s face, it seemed to him that here at last was one as honest as air and as straightforward as light.  But no experienced woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower.  She must either avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing it.  It took him a few minutes to perceive that Diane had chosen the latter course, and had done it with a fine disdain of anything he might choose to think.  She was not of the order of women who hesitate for petty considerations, or who stoop to small manoeuvrings.

“I’m afraid I must go now,” she said, when he had stood some time without speaking.

“Don’t go yet.  Sit down.”

His tone was still one of command, but not of the same quality of command as that which he had used on her entry.  He brought her a chair, and she seated herself again.

“You said just now,” he began, resuming his former attitude, with his arm on the mantelpiece, “that you didn’t expect me to be so definite.  Suppose I had been indefinite; then what would you have done?”

“I should have been indefinite, too.”

“That’s all very well; but, you see, I have to look at things from the point of view of business.”