“Have I shown lack of interest, papa?”

“No, Marian, your intent eyes have been eloquent with feeling.  Therefore I have spoken so long and fully.  You have, as it were, drawn the words from me.  You have made this outpouring of my heart seem as natural as breathing, for when you look as you do to-night, I can almost think aloud to you.  You have a sympathetic face, my child, and when expressing intelligent sympathy it grows beautiful.  It was only pretty before.  Prettiness is merely a thing of outline and color; beauty comes from the soul.”

She came and stood at his side, resting her arm lightly on his shoulder.

“Papa,” she said, “your words are a revelation to me.  Your world is indeed a new one, and a better one than mine.  But I must cease to be a girl, and become a woman, to enter it.”

“You need not be less happy; you do not loset anything.  A picture is ever finer for shadows and depth of perspective.  You can’t get anything very fine, in either art or life, from mere bright surface glare.”

“I can’t go back to that any more; something in my very soul tells me that I cannot; and your loneliness and danger would render even the wish to do so base.  No, I feel now that I would rather be a woman, even though it involves a crown of thorns, than to be a shallow creature that my own heart would despise.  I may never be either wise or deep, but I shall be to you all I can.”

“You do very much for me in those words alone, my darling.  As I said before, no one can tell what you may become if you develop your own nature naturally.”

CHAPTER IV.

Woman’s chief right.

It was late when Marian and her father parted, and each felt that a new era had begun in their lives.  To the former it was like a deep religious experience.  She was awed and somewhat depressed, as well as resolute and earnest.  Life was no pleasure excursion to her father.  Questions involving the solemnity of danger, possibly death, occupied his mind.  Yet it was not of either that he thought, but of the questions themselves.  She saw that he was a large-hearted, large-brained man, who entered into the best spirit of his age, and found recreation in the best thought of the past, and she felt that she was still but a little child beside him.

“But I shall no longer be a silly child or a shallow, selfish, unfeeling girl.  I know there is something better in my nature than this.  Papa’s words confirm what I have read but never thought of much:  the chief need of men who can do much or who amount to much is the intelligent sympathy of women who understand and care for them.  Why, it was the inspiration of chivalry, even in the dark ages.  Well, Marian Vosburgh, if you can’t excel a kitchen-maid, it would be better that you had never lived.”

The sun was shining brightly when she wakened on the following morning, and when she came to breakfast their domestic handed her a note from her father, by which she was informed that he would dine with her earlier than usual, and that they would take a sail down the bay.