ather
explained. "Read the first chapter of Job"; beyond that, nothing.
Whenever she came upon the obliterated word and paused, her father
would say: "Faith. Go on." So, after a time, encountering the blot,
she herself would supply the word Faith. But was it Faith? That is
what she was this day going to find out.

She closed her eyes more vividly to recall some line which had
carried the blot. And so she came upon the word _Love_. Blotted
out--Love! With infinite care, through nearly a thousand pages,
her father had obliterated the word _Love_. Why? Love was a word of
God's, and yet her father had denied it--denied it to the Book,
denied it to his own flesh and blood. Why? He could preach the Word
and deny Love!--tame the savage heart, succour broken white
men!--pray with his face strained with religious fervour! The idea
made her dizzy because it was so inexplicable. She could accord her
father with one grace: he was not in any manner a hypocrite. Tender
with the sick, firm with the strong, fearless, with a body that had
the resistance of iron, there was nothing of the hypocrite in him.

She recalled him. A gaunt, powerful man: no feature of his face
decided, and yet for all that it had the significance of a
countenance hewn out of rock. Never had he corrected her with hand
or whip, the ring in his voice had always been sufficient to cower
her. But never had the hand touched her with a father's caress;
never had he taken her into his arms; never had he kissed her. She
had never been "My child" or "My dear"; always her name--Ruth.

Love, obliterated, annihilated; out of his heart and out of his
Bible. Why? Here was a curtain indeed. No matter. It was ended. She
herself had cut the slender tie that had bound them. Ah, but she
could remember; and many things there were that she would never
forgive. Sometimes--a lonely forlorn child--she had gone to him and
put her arms around his neck. Stonily he had disengaged himself. "I
forbid you to do that." She had brought home a puppy one day. He
had taken it back. He destroyed her clumsily made dolls whenever he
found them.

Once she had asked him: "Are you my father?"

He had answered: "I am."

She had no reason to doubt him. Her father, her own father! She
remembered now a verse from the Psalms her father had always been
quoting; but now she recited it with perfect understanding.

_How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? How long wilt thou
hide thy face from me