ld rather leave home and everything than
endure her misery any longer, I should be wrong if I didn't speak to
you. Why are you so unkind? What serious cause has mother ever given
you?'

'I refuse to argue such questions with you.'

'Then you are very unjust. I am not a child, and there's nothing wrong
in my asking you why home is made a place of misery, instead of being
what home ought to be.'

'You prove that you are a child, in asking for explanations which ought
to be clear enough to you.'

'You mean that mother is to blame for everything?'

'The subject is no fit one to be discussed between a father and his
daughter. If you cannot see the impropriety of it, be so good as to go
away and reflect, and leave me to my occupations.'

Marian came to a pause. But she knew that his rebuke was mere unworthy
evasion; she saw that her father could not meet her look, and this
perception of shame in him impelled her to finish what she had begun.

'I will say nothing of mother, then, but speak only for myself. I suffer
too much from your unkindness; you ask too much endurance.'

'You mean that I exact too much work from you?' asked her father, with a
look which might have been directed to a recalcitrant clerk.

'No. But that you make the conditions of my work too hard. I live in
constant fear of your anger.'

'Indeed? When did I last ill-use you, or threaten you?'

'I often think that threats, or even ill-usage, would be easier to bear
than an unchanging gloom which always seems on the point of breaking
into violence.'

'I am obliged to you for your criticism of my disposition and manner,
but unhappily I am too old to reform. Life has made me what I am, and I
should have thought that your knowledge of what my life has been would
have gone far to excuse a lack of cheerfulness in me.'

The irony of this laborious period was full of self-pity. His voice
quavered at the close, and a tremor was noticeable in his stiff frame.

'It isn't lack of cheerfulness that I mean, father. That could never
have brought me to speak like this.'

'If you wish me to admit that I am bad-tempered, surly, irritable--I
make no difficulty about that. The charge is true enough. I can only ask
you again: What are the circumstances that have ruined my temper? When
you present yourself here with a general accusation of my behaviour, I
am at a loss to understand what you ask of me, what you wish me to say
or do. I must beg you to speak plainly.