She shook her head as though something blurred her sight. “I thought it was your father,” she told him, and there was a bitter condemnation in her tone.
John said, “You mustn’t blame him.”
“He’s not even sorry,” she explained softly, thoughtfully.
“He is,” John insisted. “You never understood him. He loved her so.”
She flung her head to one side impatiently and got to her feet, brushing at her eyes with her sleeve, fumbling with her hair, composing her countenance. “It’s growing dark,” she said. “We must take her home.”
He nodded. “I’ll carry her,” he said; and he crossed and bent above the dead woman, and looked at her for a moment silently. The girl, watching him, saw in the still strength of his features a likeness to his father that was suddenly terrible and appalling.
She shuddered; and when he would have lifted her sister’s body she cried out in passionate hysterical protest, “Don’t touch her! Don’t touch her! You shan’t touch her, John Evered!”
John looked at her slowly; and with that rare understanding which was the birthright of the man he said, “You’re blaming father.”
“Yes, yes,” she cried, “I am.”
“It was never his fault,” he said.