"'Hermione,' he cried, 'put on your hat and come directly with me to church.'
"I simply looked at him.
"'Do you hear?' he exclaimed, stepping into the room and shutting the door after him. 'I have had enough of this nonsense, and to-day you go out with me to church or you never shall call me father again.'
"'Have you been a father to me?' I asked.
"He shook and quivered and was a picture of rage. I remembered as I looked at him, thinking, 'Behold the source of my own temper,' but I said nothing, and was in no other way affected by what I saw.
"'I have been such a father to you as your folly and blindness deserved,' he exclaimed. 'Should I continue to treat you according to your deserts, I would tell you what would lay you in shame at my feet. But I have promised to be silent, and silent will I be, not out of consideration for you, but because your punishment will some day be the greater. Will you give up this whim and go with me, and so let your sister go also, or will you not?'
"'I will not.'
"He showed a sudden change of manner. 'I will ask you the same question next Sunday,' said he, and left my presence with his old air of indifference and absorption. No subject disconnected with his work could rouse more than a temporary passion in him.
"He kept his word. Every Sunday morning he came on the same errand to my door, and every Sunday he went forth alone. During the week days he did not trouble me. Indeed, I do not know as he thought of me then, or even of Emma, who had always been dearer to him than I. He was engaged on some new experiment, some vital discovery that filled him with enthusiasm and made every moment passed out of his laboratory a trial and a loss to him. He ate that he might work, he slept that he might gather new strength and inspiration for the next day. If visitors came he refused to see them; the one visitor who could have assisted him at the retort and crucible had been denied the door, and any other was a hindrance. Our troubles, our cares, our schemes, or our attempts to supply the table and dress ourselves upon the few and fewer dollars he now allowed us, sank into insignificance before the one idea with which he was engrossed. I do not think he even knew when we ceased having meat for dinner. That Emma was growing pale and I desperate did not attract his attention as much as a speck of dust upon a favorite jar or a crack in one of his miserable tubes.
"That this deep absorption of his was real and not assumed was made evident to me the first Sunday morning he forgot to come to my door. It was a relief not to have to go through the usual formula, but it alarmed me too. I was afraid I was to be allowed to go my own way unhindered, and I was beginning to feel a softness towards Emma and a longing for the life of the world, which made me anxious for some excuse to break a resolution which was entailing upon me so much more suffering than I had anticipated. Indeed, I think if my father had persisted in his practice and come but two or three Sunday mornings more to my door, that my pride would have yielded at last, and my feet in spite of me have followed him out of a house that, since it had become my prison, had become more than ever hateful to me. But he stopped just as a crisis was taking place in my feelings, and my heart hardened again. Before it could experience again the softening effects of Emma's uncomplaining presence the news came that Dr. Sellick had left the town, and my motive for quitting the house was taken from me. Henceforth I felt no more life or hope or ambition than if I had been an automaton.