He beat with his feeble closed hand on his table.
"Do you understand?" he said. "You will tell him that he may come here when we are gone. Not before, and not after we get back. He can look at his picture every day for three months. You may tell him that if you choose. And you have no consideration for me, Joyce: you make me excited, and make me raise my voice, which, as you know quite well, always gives me a fit of coughing."
Joyce came back from the window, and sat down by her father at his table.
"If I am to write such a letter, father," she said, "I must know why I write it. You must tell me something which accounts for it."
She had her voice perfectly in control, but she could not control her colour. She felt that her face had become white, and though she detested herself for this palpable sign of emotion, she was powerless to prevent it.
"It is easy for me to account for it," said Philip, "though I should have hoped that my wish was enough."
"It isn't enough," said Joyce quietly. "I have treated him like a friend."
"You must treat him as a friend no longer, and as an acquaintance no longer. He is not a desirable friend for you nor an acquaintance. He is nothing to you: he painted a portrait. He begins and ends with that. He is not the sort of man I want to know, or want my daughter to know."
The weak rage subsided: but the calmer tone which followed was not less ineffectual.
"You must take my word for it, dear Joyce," he said. "You are young and inexperienced, and you must obey me, and not see any more of this young man. I have excellent authority for telling you that he is undesirable as friend or acquaintance. I am sorry for it: he seemed harmless enough and even well-bred!"