Electra was smiling very winningly.
"Not over here?" she suggested. "Not before one or two clubs, all women, you know, all thoughtful, all earnest?"
Rose answered coldly,—
"I am not in sympathy with the ideas my father talks about."
"Not with the Brotherhood!"
"Not as my father talks about it." She grew restive. Under Electra's impenetrable courtesy she was committing herself to declarations that had been, heretofore, sealed in her secret thought. "I want to talk to you," she said desperately, with the winning pathos of a child denied, "not about my father,—about other things."
"This is always the way," said Electra pleasantly, with her immutable determination behind the words. "He is your father, and your familiarity makes you indifferent to him. There are a million things I should like to know about Markham MacLeod,—what he eats and wears, almost. Couldn't you tell me what induced him—what sudden, vital thing, I mean—to stop his essay-writing and found the Brotherhood?"
Rose answered coldly, and as if from irresistible impulse,—
"My father's books never paid."
Electra gazed at her, with wide-eyed reproach.