“Aunt Cornelia’s!” she exclaimed.

“Or, if you and your mother want to go to Europe,” he put in hastily, seeing her puzzled face, “I think I can arrange about passports.”

“Does that mean he won’t have me back, father?”

“Lily, dear,” he said, hoarse with anxiety, “we simply have to remember that he is a very old man, and that his mind is not elastic.  He is feeling very bitter now, but he will get over it.”

“And I am to travel around waiting to be forgiven!  I was ready to go back, but—­he won’t have me.  Is that it?”

“Only just for the present.”  He threw out his hands.  “I have tried everything.  I suppose, in a way, I could insist, make a point of it, but there are other things to be considered.  His age, for one thing, and then—­the strike.  If he takes an arbitrary stand against me, no concession, no argument with the men, it makes it very difficult, in many ways.”

“I see.  It is wicked that any one man should have such power.  The city, the mills, his family—­it’s wicked.”  But she was conscious of no deep anger against Anthony now.  She merely saw that between them, they, she and her grandfather, had dug a gulf that could not be passed.  And in Howard’s efforts she saw the temporizing that her impatient youth resented.

“I am afraid it is a final break, father,” she said.  “And if he shuts me out I must live my own life.  But I am not going to run away to Aunt Cornelia or Europe.  I shall stay here.”

He had to be content with that.  After all, his own sister—­but he wished it were not Jim Doyle’s house.  Not that he regarded Lily’s shift toward what he termed Bolshevism very seriously; all youth had a slant toward socialism, and outgrew it.  But he went away sorely troubled, after a few words with Elinor Doyle alone.

“You don’t look unhappy, Nellie.”

“Things have been much better the last few years.”

“Is he kind to you?”

“Not always, Howard.  He doesn’t drink now, so that is over.  And I think there are no other women.  But when things go wrong I suffer, of course.”  She stared past him toward the open window.

“Why don’t you leave him?”

“I couldn’t go home, Howard.  You know what it would be.  Worse than Lily.  And I’m too old to start out by myself.  My habits are formed, and besides, I—­” She checked herself.

“I could take a house somewhere for both of you, Lily and yourself,” he said eagerly; “that would be a wonderful way out for everybody.”

She shook her head.

“We’ll manage all right,” she said.  “I’ll make Lily comfortable and as happy as I can.”

He felt that he had to make his own case clear, or he might have noticed with what care she was choosing her words.  His father’s age, his unconscious dependence on Grace, his certainty to retire soon from the arbitrary stand he had taken.  Elinor hardly heard him.  Months afterwards he was to remember the distant look in her eyes, a sort of half-frightened determination, but he was self-engrossed just then.