t be."

"You're very young to make the claim."

"There are other ways of gaining experience than by years; and," she
added, with the intention to divert the conversation from herself, "the
small store I happen to possess I was willing to share with your
daughter, in whatever way she might have need of it."

"But not in my way."

"Not in your way, perhaps, but for the furthering of your purposes."

"How could you further my purposes when you wouldn't do what I wanted?"

"By getting her to do it of her own accord."

"Could you promise me she would?"

"I couldn't promise you anything at all. I could only do my best, and
see how she would respond to it."

"She's a very good little girl," he hastened to declare.

"I'm sure of that. Though I don't know her well, I've seen her often
enough to understand that whatever mistakes she may make, they are those
of youth and independence. She is only a motherless girl who has been
allowed--who, in a certain way, has been obliged--to look after herself.
I've noticed that underneath her self-reliant manner she's very much a
child."

"That's true."

"But I should never treat her as a child, except--except in one way."

"Which would be--?"

"To give her plenty of affection."

"She's always had that."

"Yes, yours; she hasn't had her mother's. Don't think me cruel in saying
it, but no girl can grow up nourished only by her father's love, and not
miss something that the good God intended her to have. The reason women
are so essential to babies and men is chiefly because of their faculty
for understanding the inarticulate. With all your daughter has had,
there is one great thing that she hasn't had; and if you had placed me
near her, my idea, which I call vague, would have been--as far as any
one could do it now--to supply her with some of that."

Derek retreated again to the fireside, alarmed by a language
suspiciously like that he had heard on other occasions concerning the
motherless condition of his child. Was it going to turn out that all
women were alike? There had been minutes during the last half-hour when,
as he looked into Diane's face, it seemed to him that here at last was
one as honest as air and as straightforward as light. But no experienced
woman of the world, as she declared herself to be, could forget that
this was a ludicrously delicate topic with a widower. She must either
avoid it altogether, or expose herself to misinterpretation in pursuing
it. It