this up it was still with his back to her. "If I don't
strike you as having already spoken it, our time has been singularly
wasted."

"I'll engage with you in respect to my aunt exactly to what she wants
of me in respect to you. She wants me to choose. Very well, I _will_
choose. I'll wash my hands of her for you to just that tune."

He at last brought himself round. "Do you know, dear, you make me sick?
I've tried to be clear, and it isn't fair."

But she passed this over; she was too visibly sincere. "Father!"

"I don't quite see what's the matter with you," he said, "and if you
can't pull yourself together I'll--upon my honour--take you in hand.
Put you into a cab and deliver you again safe at Lancaster Gate."

She was really absent, distant. "Father."

It was too much, and he met it sharply. "Well?"

"Strange as it may be to you to hear me say it, there's a good you can
do me and a help you can render."

"Isn't it then exactly what I've been trying to make you feel?"

"Yes," she answered patiently, "but so in the wrong way. I'm perfectly
honest in what I say, and I know what I'm talking about. It isn't that
I'll pretend I could have believed a month ago in anything to call aid
or support from you. The case is changed--that's what has happened; my
difficulty's a new one. But even now it's not a question of anything I
should ask you in a way to 'do.' It's simply a question of your not
turning me away--taking yourself out of my life. It's simply a question
of your saying: 'Yes then, since you will, we'll stand together. We
won't worry in advance about how or where; we'll have a faith and find
a way.' That's all--_that_ would be the good you'd do me. I should
_have_ you, and it would be for my benefit. Do you see?"

If he didn't it was not for want of looking at her hard. "The matter
with you is that you're in love, and that your aunt knows and--for
reasons, I'm sure, perfect--hates and opposes it. Well she may! It's a
matter in which I trust her with my eyes shut. Go, please." Though he
spoke not in anger--rather in infinite sadness--he fairly turned her
out. Before she took it up he had, as the fullest expression of what he
felt, opened the door of the room. He had fairly, in his deep
disapproval, a generous compassion to spare. "I'm sorry for her,
deluded woman, if she builds on you."

Kate stood a moment in the draught. "She's not the person _I_ pity
most, for, deluded in many ways though she may be, she