“Dear old father,” she said softly. “We used not to be really great friends in the old days. But now somehow you’re the only person I find any comfort in. I think perhaps it is because we are both putting up a hard fight.”
“Don’t forget the spice of life is battle, Vi, as Stevenson has it. I’m inclined to think, though”—he spoke slowly as one envolving a thought new to him—“I’m inclined to think we sometimes confuse bitterness and rebellion with it. That’s not clean fighting. My dear, put that hate you speak of away from you, if you can—and have nothing to do with bitterness—they are forces which can only make for evil.”
There was a little pause.
“I don’t think I can, father. It’s part of me. Sometimes I think it’s all me, and sometimes I’m frightened.”
“Look here, Vi,” said North, struggling with a disinclination to make the proposition that was in his mind, a disinclination that he felt was ridiculous, “I wish you would go over to Thorpe and get to know Miss Seer.”
Violet sat up and looked at him with wide-open eyes.
“But why? I should hate it!” she exclaimed. “It would remind me—oh, of so many things! It would make me feel even worse——”
“Well, so I thought,” said North. “I can tell you I dreaded going. But the old place is full of a—a strange sort of rest. I didn’t realize how full of bitterness and resentment I had been until sitting there it all dropped away from me. It was as if a stone had been rolled away. I hadn’t realized how it was hurting until it left off.”
He spoke disjointedly, and as if almost against his will. He was glad when the sound of his wife’s and Mr. Fothersley’s approaching voices made Violet release his hand and stand up.
“You think Thorpe would lay my devils too?” she asked, looking down at him.