can have made her do it. She never was a girl that cared
for gadding about, and for society and that. As for trying to make
me believe that I should be no worse off if she married, the
question has never risen, Durant. She hasn't married. She never even
wanted to be married. She never would have been married."

"That makes it all the more natural that she should want to see
something of the world instead."

"No, it's not natural. I could have understood her wanting to get
married, that's natural enough; but what's a woman got to do with
seeing the world? It's not as if she was my son, Durant."

Durant listened and wondered. As far as he could make out, the
Colonel's attitude to his daughter was twofold. On the one hand, he
seemed to regard her as part of the little property, and as existing
for the sake of the little property, from which point of view she
had acquired a certain value in his eyes. On the other hand, he
looked upon her as an inferior part of Himself, and as existing for
the sake of Himself; it was a view old as the hills and the earth
they were made of, being the paternal side of the simple primeval
attitude of the man to the woman. And, seeing that the little
property was a mere drop in the ocean of the Colonel's egoism, this
view might be said to include the other as the greater includes the
less. On either theory Frida Tancred was not supposed to have any
rights, or, indeed, any substantial existence of her own; she was an
attribute, an adjunct.

"Seeing the world--fiddlesticks! Don't tell me there isn't something
else at the bottom of it--it's an insult to my intelligence."

As everything the Colonel did not understand was an insult to his
intelligence, his intelligence must have had to put up with an
extraordinary number of affronts.

He leaned heavily on the young man's arm. "It's shaken me. I shall
never be the fellow I was. I can't understand it. Nobody could have
done more for any girl than I've done for Frida; and she deserts me,
Durant, deserts me in my old age with my strength failing."

Durant vainly tried to make himself worthy of Frida Tancred's trust,
but he could add nothing to her reasoning, and she had kept her
best argument to the last,--"It will make less difference to you
than my marriage would have made."

"After all, sir, will it make so very much difference if--if your
daughter does go away for a year or two?"

"I can't say. I can't tell you that till I've tried it, my