“And I, too, have much to learn about my children,” said he.
Helen’s eye flashed back at him. She was afraid no longer. The talk she had had with Frank on that memorable Sunday afternoon she had put away like stored provisions; often since it had been food to her thoughts, and it was now all eaten, digested, assimilated. The instinct of individualism had no doubt often been present to her mind before, but what he said then had made it blossom and fructify. He had said, in fact, perhaps no more than she had known, though without knowing she knew it; his words had been a taper to a gas-jet already turned on. Without the taper it might have continued to escape; the taper made flame of it. And in the light of it the figure “father” was shewn her as a man only, capable of using one vote, in opposition it might be to her own, but, however dear and intimate he was to her, and in spite of her parentage, education, and upbringing, he was still only somebody, not herself. And she, Helen, had to be herself.
“Yes; you are learning that they are people,” she said, in answer to his bitterness. “Martin and I are people. I must think for myself and feel for myself. Yes; I knew that Frank is what he is,—an atheist. And I love him.”
Mr. Challoner looked at her a moment with terrible, alien eyes, meeting her full gaze. Then he turned and went towards the door.
Instantly the daughter in her awoke.
“Father,” she cried, holding out her hands to him, “Father.”
But he passed out without turning, and she heard the door of his study opposite close behind him, and the click of a lock.
The finality, the sharpness of that click of well-oiled wards, brought home to the girl, even more than the bitter and burning words which had been said, what had happened, the unbridgeable breach that had opened between herself and her father. For, even now, distraught as she was with the agitation of the scene, so that she felt almost physically sick, she knew that she had acted in compulsory obedience to an instinct which was irresistible; she could not call back into her own control the love she had given. Whatever else beckoned, that to her was the strongest call. And equally well-known to her was the instinct in obedience to which her father had acted. Dear as his children were to him, there was something infinitely dearer, that which from the tower of the church had pointed upwards into the clear, sunset sky. No assertion of individualism made its voice heard there; the one immutable love claimed all allegiances.
Infinitely shocked and distressed as he was, Mr. Challoner did not suffer during the next half-hour nearly as keenly as Helen, for the idea that she would not eventually—after pain and struggle, no doubt—see as he saw never entered his mind. Indeed, after a few minutes the emotion predominant in him was pity for her at the necessity of the rejection of the human love offered to and accepted by her. She would be led to the light—not for a moment did he doubt that—and the suffering would ennoble and not embitter her. Then, out of pity for her, compunction at what he had done rose within him. Again he had been harsh and peremptory; not even the sacred cause he championed could justify that nor excuse his lack of gentleness. He had left her in anger, anger as he now acknowledged to himself partly personal in its origin. So, before half an hour was passed, he unlocked his door, and going upstairs to her bedroom, tapped softly.
Helen had had no more thought of going to bed than he, and she let him in at once.