“How should I know! All my life you’ve been silent and there were times——”
He interrupted. “It is because I cared so much. I was so anxious for you and wanted you to do so well. I’m not demonstrative. I always hoped that we might be friends. But you never came to me with your troubles from a little chap, anyone was better than your father—servants, your Uncle Spreckles, Ruthita, anybody. With me you were dumb.”
“You never encouraged my confidence and now you condemn me unheard. Silence between us has become a habit.”
He stabbed the blotting-paper with his pen. His emotions were stirred; he was afraid he might betray them. So he spoke hurriedly. “It’s too late to cover old ground. We’ve drifted apart, that’s certain—and now this has happened... this disgrace... this adultery of thoughts... this lust for a married woman.”
I walked across to the window and drummed upon the panes. Across the garden a soft gray dusk was falling. Along those paths Ruthita and I had played; the garden was empty and very lonely. Scene after scene came back, made kindly by distance. I turned. “Father, I’m not going to let you turn me out until you know all about it. For the first time you’ve told me frankly that you wanted me. I was always frightened as a little chap.”
Instead of taking me up angrily as I expected, he spoke gently. “Why shouldn’t I want you? I thought you’d understand by the way I worked. Sit down, boy; why are you standing? How... how did it happen?”
The Snow Lady rapped on the door and almost entered. My father signed to her to go away, saying that we would come to her later. Then I told him. And while I told him I kept thinking how strange it was that until now, when we had quarreled, we should never have found one another, but, like two people eager to meet, had walked always at the same pace, in the same direction, out of sight, round and round on opposite sides of the same house.
It was dark when I finished. He leant out and laid his hand on my arm. “And now that it’s all ended, we can make a new start together.”
“It may not be all ended.”
“But it is. You’re not going to tell me that you’re still hankering after a married woman?”