"Faithie!" said Paul's father, a little suddenly, at last—"do you know how true a thing you said a little while ago?"
"How, sir?" asked Faith, not perceiving what he meant.
"When you spoke of having your hand on the mainspring of all this?"
And he raised his right arm, motioning with the slender whip he held, along the line of factory buildings that lay before them.
A deep, blazing blush burned, at his words, over Faith's cheek and brow. She sat and suffered it under his eye—uttering not a syllable.
"I knew you did not know. You did not think of it so. Yet it is true, none the less. Faith! Are you happy? Are you satisfied?"
Still a silence, and tears gathering in the eyes.
"I do not wish to distress you, my dear. It is only a little word I should like to hear you speak. I must, so far as I can, see that my children are happy, Faith."
"I suppose," said Faith, tremulously, struggling to speech—"one cannot expect to be utterly happy in this world."
"One does expect it, forgetting all else, at the moment when is given what seems to one life's first, great good—the earthly good that comes but once. I remember my own youth, Faithie. Pure, present content is seldom overwise."