It suddenly occurred to me that she might be.  I was softened, and alarmed by the spectacle she had revealed of the widening breach between us.  I laid my hand on her shoulder.

“Well, I’ll try to do better, Maude.”

She looked up at me, questioningly yet gratefully, through a mist of tears.  But her reply—­whatever it might have been—­was forestalled by the sound of shouts and laughter in the hallway.  She sprang up and ran to the door.

“It’s the children,” she exclaimed, “they’ve come home from Susan’s party!”

It begins indeed to look as if I were writing this narrative upside down, for I have said nothing about children.  Perhaps one reason for this omission is that I did not really appreciate them, that I found it impossible to take the same minute interest in them as Tom, for instance, who was, apparently, not content alone with the six which he possessed, but had adopted mine.  One of them, little Sarah, said “Uncle Tom” before “Father.”  I do not mean to say that I had not occasional moments of tenderness toward them, but they were out of my thoughts much of the time.  I have often wondered, since, how they regarded me; how, in their little minds, they defined the relationship.  Generally, when I arrived home in the evening I liked to sit down before my study fire and read the afternoon newspapers or a magazine; but occasionally I went at once to the nursery for a few moments, to survey with complacency the medley of toys on the floor, and to kiss all three.  They received my caresses with a certain shyness—­the two younger ones, at least, as though they were at a loss to place me as a factor in the establishment.  They tumbled over each other to greet Maude, and even Tom.  If I were an enigma to them, what must they have thought of him?  Sometimes I would discover him on the nursery floor, with one or two of his own children, building towers and castles and railroad stations, or forts to be attacked and demolished by regiments of lead soldiers.  He was growing comfortable-looking, if not exactly stout; prematurely paternal, oddly willing to renounce the fiercer joys of life, the joys of acquisition, of conquest, of youth.

“You’d better come home with me, Chickabiddy,” he would say, “that father of yours doesn’t appreciate you.  He’s too busy getting rich.”

“Chickabiddy,” was his name for little Sarah.  Half of the name stuck to her, and when she was older we called her Biddy.

She would gaze at him questioningly, her eyes like blue flower cups, a strange little mixture of solemnity and bubbling mirth, of shyness and impulsiveness.  She had fat legs that creased above the tops of the absurd little boots that looked to be too tight; sometimes she rolled and tumbled in an ecstasy of abandon, and again she would sit motionless, as though absorbed in dreams.  Her hair was like corn silk in the sun, twisting up into soft curls after her bath, when she sat rosily presiding over her supper table.