But Rose had heard that reason. She was tired of it.
"It's a pity they make it so hard for other people," she said wearily. "Because they are great, must they be greedy, too? But that was my father. He may have been a great man, but he was not the man you think him. If you saw him as he was,—he was a big, dominating animal, that's all."
Electra sat staring at her, condemning, Rose knew, not Markham MacLeod, but his daughter. The charm of his mastery was still upon her. Rose and Peter, more mobile than she, had escaped with the cutting of his cord of life. It was as if they had been under a crude natural magnetism, and now that the magician had gone into another room, they were free. But Electra had petrified in the attitude where he had left her. She had a pitying certainty that Rose had never known him. Something like indignation came now into her face. She spoke passionately:—
"Why do you want to take it away from me?"
Rose could not answer. Tears were in her eyes from pure pity at the loss and pain of it all.
"We knew each other so short a time," brooded Electra; and it was apparent that she believed the relation had been as much to MacLeod as to her. "Why can't you let me have the comfort of it?"
"If it didn't mean so much time, so much energy wasted! If you wouldn't devote your life to it,—you might, you know. It's quite like you, Electra. And that would be a pity; because he was never for a minute such a person as you think him,—never, Electra, never in the world."
Electra rounded upon her in a flash of indignation.
"Tell me what you think him."
Rose's mind ran back to that first night when, with the daring inspired in her by their meeting, she had given Osmond a portrait of her father. Now was the time to paint it again, but, for some reason, she could not. The man had not changed, but his aims obscured him. Behind them, he was nothing, but they were large enough to make his monument. Instead of answering directly, she found herself saying,—