Already the sweat had started on his forehead, and across one cheek the old gray fretwork of wrinkles began to shadow suddenly. "I've done my best!" he pleaded. "I swear I have! Only I've never known how! With a mother, now," he stammered, "with a wife, with a sister, with your best friend's sister, you know just what to do! It's a definite relation! Prescribed by a definite emotion! But a daughter? Oh, ye gods! Your whole sexual angle of vision changed! A creature neither fish, flesh, nor fowl! Non-superior, non-contemporaneous, non-subservient! Just a lady! A strange lady! Yes, that's exactly it, Eve—a strange lady—growing eternally just a little bit more strange—just a little bit more remote—every minute of her life! Yet it's so—damned intimate all the time!" he blurted out passionately. "All the time she's rowing you about your manners and your morals, all the time she's laying down the law to you about the tariff or the turnips, you're remembering—how you used to—scrub her—in her first little blue-lined tin bath-tub!"
Once again the flickering smile flared up in little Eve Edgarton's eyes and was gone again. A trifle self-consciously she burrowed back into her pillows. When she spoke her voice was scarcely audible. "Oh, I know I'm funny," she admitted conscientiously.
"You're not funny!" snapped her father.
"Yes, I am," whispered the girl.
"No, you're not!" reasserted her father with increasing vehemence. "You're not! It's I who am funny! It's I who—" In a chaos of emotion he slid along the edge of the bed and clasped her in his arms. Just for an instant his wet cheek grazed hers, then: "All the same, you know," he insisted awkwardly, "I hate this place!"
Surprisingly little Eve Edgarton reached up and kissed him full on the mouth. They were both very much embarrassed.
"Why—why, Eve!" stammered her father. "Why, my little—little girl! Why, you haven't kissed me—before—since you were a baby!"
"Yes, I have!" nodded little Eve Edgarton.
"No, you haven't!" snapped her father.
"Yes, I have!" insisted Eve.