a little bit more remote—­every minute of her life!  Yet it’s so—­damned intimate all the time!” he blurted out passionately.  “All the time she’s rowing you about your manners and your morals, all the time she’s laying down the law to you about the tariff or the turnips, you’re remembering—­how you used to—­scrub her—­in her first little blue-lined tin bath-tub!”

Once again the flickering smile flared up in little Eve Edgarton’s eyes and was gone again.  A trifle self-consciously she burrowed back into her pillows.  When she spoke her voice was scarcely audible.  “Oh, I know I’m funny,” she admitted conscientiously.

“You’re not funny!” snapped her father.

“Yes, I am,” whispered the girl.

“No, you’re not!” reasserted her father with increasing vehemence.  “You’re not!  It’s I who am funny!  It’s I who—­” In a chaos of emotion he slid along the edge of the bed and clasped her in his arms.  Just for an instant his wet cheek grazed hers, then:  “All the same, you know,” he insisted awkwardly, “I hate this place!”

Surprisingly little Eve Edgarton reached up and kissed him full on the mouth.  They were both very much embarrassed.

“Why—­why, Eve!” stammered her father.  “Why, my little—­little girl!  Why, you haven’t kissed me—­before—­since you were a baby!”

“Yes, I have!” nodded little Eve Edgarton.

“No, you haven’t!” snapped her father.

“Yes, I have!” insisted Eve.

Tighter and tighter their arms clasped round each other.  “You’re all I’ve got,” faltered the man brokenly.

“You’re all I’ve ever had,” whispered little Eve Edgarton.

Silently for a moment each according to his thoughts sat staring off into far places.  Then without any warning whatsoever, the man reached out suddenly and tipped his daughter’s face up abruptly into the light.

“Eve!” he demanded.  “Surely you’re not blaming me any in your heart because I want to see you safely married and settled with—­with John Ellbertson?”

Vaguely, like a child repeating a dimly understood lesson, little Eve Edgarton repeated the phrases after him.  “Oh, no, Father,” she said, “I surely am not blaming you—­in my heart—­for wanting to see me married and settled with—­John Ellbertson.  Good old John Ellbertson,” she corrected painstakingly.

With his hand still holding her little chin like a vise, the man’s eyes narrowed to his further probing.  “Eve,” he frowned, “I’m not as well as I used to be!  I’ve got pains in my arms!  And they’re not good pains!  I shall live to be a thousand!  But I—­I might not!  It’s a—­rotten world, Eve,” he brooded, “and quite unnecessarily crowded—­it seems to me—­with essentially rotten people.  Toward the starving and the crippled and the hideously distorted, the world, having no envy of them, shows always an amazing mercy; and Beauty, whatever its sorrows, can always retreat to the thick protecting wall of its own conceit.  But as for the rest of us?” he grinned with a sudden convulsive twist of the eyebrow, “God help the unduly prosperous—­and the merely plain!  From the former—­always, Envy, like a wolf, shall tear down every fresh talent, every fresh treasure, they lift to their aching backs.  And from the latter—­Brutal Neglect shall ravage away even the charm that they thought they had!