“Oh, I don’t know,” he said.  “It’s pretty conveniant to have a Familey to drop on when the slump comes.”  He thumped himself on the chest.  “A hundred and eighty pounds,” he observed, “just intended for little daughters to fall back on when other things fail.”

“Father,” I inquired, putting my hand in his, because I had been bearing my burdens alone, and my strength was failing:  “do you beleive in Love?”

“Do I!”

“But I mean, not the ordinery atachment between two married people.  I mean Love—­the reel thing.”

“I see!  Why, of course I do.”

“Did you ever read Pope, father?”

“Pope?  Why I—­probably, chicken.  Why?”

“Then you know what he says:  `Curse on all laws but those which Love has made.’”

“Look here,” he said, sudenly laying a hand on my brow.  “I beleive you are feverish.”

“Not feverish, but in trouble,” I explained.  And so I told him the story, not saying much of my deep Passion for Adrian, but merely that I had formed an atachment for him which would persist during Life.  Although I had never yet exchanged a word with him.

Father listened and said it was indeed a sad story, and that he knew my deep nature, and that I would be true to the End.  But he refused to give me any money, except enough to pay back Hannah and Carter Brooks, saying: 

“Your mother does not wish you to go to the Theater again, and who are we to go against her wishes?  And anyhow, maybe if you met this fellow and talked to him, you would find him a disapointment.  Many a pretty girl I have seen in my time, who didn’t pan out acording to specifications when I finaly met her.”

At this revalation of my beloved father’s true self, I was almost stuned.  It is evadent that I do not inherit my being true as steal from him.  Nor from my mother, who is like steal in hardness but not in being true to anything but Social Position.

As I record this awfull day, dear Dairy, there comes again into my mind the thought that I do not belong here.  I am not like them.  I do not even resemble them in features.  And, if I belonged to them, would they not treat me with more consideration and less disipline?  Who, in the Familey, has my noze?

It is all well enough for Hannah to observe that I was a pretty baby with fat cheaks.  May not Hannah herself, for some hiden reason, have brought me here, taking away the real I to perhaps languish unseen and “waste my sweetness on the dessert air”?  But that way lies madness.  Life must be made the best of as it is, and not as it might be or indeed ought to be.

Father promised before he left that I was not to be scolded, as I felt far from well, and was drinking water about every minute.

“I just want to lie here and think about things,” I said, when he was going.  “I seem to have so many thoughts.  And father——­”

“Yes, chicken.”