my own girl--so wonderful,
so beautiful, so good--reading by the lamp.

You need not think I had not seen her before. If I spent my working
hours manipulating the automaton at the old museum, all my leisure I
spent in seeking a glimpse of my own daughter. The very sight of her was
nourishment to my starving heart. Many is the time I have hobbled along
far behind her as she walked on the city pavements. Months on end I
strolled by the house at night to throw an unseen caress up at a lighted
window. I have seen a doctor's carriage at that door with my heart in my
mouth. I have seen admiration, given by a glance from a girl friend,
with a father's pride so great and real that it took strength of mind to
restrain myself from stopping the nearest passer-by and saying, "Look!
She is mine!"

Again the malicious fortune into which I was born was making game of me;
it had made my daughter more than a mere girl, whom I was forbidden to
claim. It had made her the loveliest creature in the world! I cried out
against it all. I knew that if I would, I could claim her. She was mine.
I had the right of a father. She was still a child. I loved her. I
wanted to have the world know that whatever else I had done and whatever
doubts I had once felt about the blood that was in my veins and hers,
now I was sure that I could claim a great achievement and hold aloft the
gift to mankind of this blooming flower.

I remembered then, however, what I had been. I saw in the bit of mirror
in my squalid lodgings a countenance stained with the indelible ink of
vice and moulded beyond repair by excesses and the sufferings of shame.
Could I present this horror to my daughter? Could I destroy her by
claiming her? Could I blight her life by thrusting my love for her
beyond the secret recesses of my own heart?

"No!" I whispered. And I prayed for strength.

Above all, I knew that except for regaining, by reading books, the
refinement of my youth, I was not changed. I knew I was not, and never
should be free from the old vicious fiends within myself. I could not,
had I come to her with health, prosperity, and a good name, have offered
her safety from my brutal nature. I had even abused the dog which had
been my only companion and the one living thing that had love for me in
its heart. I can see its eyes upon me now, with their reproach, and, I
imagine, with their distrust. I had cowed its spirit with my passions of
rage, my kicks and my curses, for each