"Yes. I am engaged to Roger Barton and we'll be married as soon as he gets a job."
"You're engaged to a man without a job! A fool, that throws up a profession—fine profession it must have been—and then asks a girl from a decent home to marry him!"
There was a silence, filled by small, clicking noises from Hilda. Then James Mitchell rose too, and with the evening paper screwed to a ferule, banged his ultimatum upon the table.
"No damned skunk like that comes into this house, not if I know it. Do you hear? What you do outside the house I can't help, and I'm not fool enough to suppose I can. I never did have any say in this house, nor about you girls. But I'll have my say about this thing and now. If this fellow thinks he's going to sneak into this house and have me support him, he's going to get left. Go ahead. Marry him; a man that asks a girl to wait till he gets a job! Have half a dozen kids and then sneer at the state of the world and a steady job." His rising voice reached a thin scream. "Do you hear? That blackguard never enters this door."
Anne looked at him, gray, thin, raging, and a sudden pity mingled with her anger. He was so tightly locked within his fear of life, his terror of all strange ways and wide roads, all experience that had not been his. In that moment, Anne's feeling for her father parted in clearer strands than she had ever seen it. She scorned and pitied and disliked him.
Without another word, Anne went into the hall, took the receiver from the hook, and called Roger's number. In the momentary silence until she got it, she felt the two gray-headed people peering at her, like animals from a hole.
"Yes, it's Anne. I don't think you can come up to-night, dear. I twisted my foot getting off the car and it's swelling. I'm going straight to bed."
Not even Roger's genuine concern, nor his loving good-night penetrated the icy calm that encased her. She hung up, and, without looking toward the dining-room, went down the hall to her own room and locked the door. Dressed, she lay upon the bed, staring up through the window to the stars.
She did not know what time it was when her mother came tapping gently at the door. But she did not open, and, after a moment, heard her tiptoe away.
Out on the back porch, Hilda Mitchell stood for a long time looking out over the city lights and trying to straighten her world so suddenly upheaved by Anne. But the fact of the engagement loomed like a blank wall before her and finally she gave up. With a sigh she went in, locked the back door and, without turning on the bedroom light, undressed and got into bed. Beside her the small gray man huddled under the clothes, but, by his stillness Hilda knew that he was not asleep.