“They’re just as unhappy in other cases,” said Andrée. “I don’t believe social position has anything to do with it. It’s—disposition. And Al has a wonderful disposition.”
“Al!” her father repeated, contemptuously.
“Yes, Al! That’s what he calls himself. I like it! It’s so nice and jolly and—common!”
“Andrée!” said her father, sternly. “This is nothing but a whim—a freak of yours.... I think you’re only trying to torment and worry the people who love you.”
“You’ll see if it’s a whim!” she answered.
Suddenly he was disarmed; some gesture, some intonation of hers, had brought back to him the naughty little girl who had so perplexed and amused him, the scowling little rebel he had so often wanted to shake—and never had. He remembered her with surprising vividness as a child of six, spending a Saturday morning with him, sitting in the corner of this very office, cutting out paper dolls, while she waited for him to wind up his business and take her out to lunch and the circus.
“Andrée!” he said. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you go over to Germany with your mother to study music for a year.”
“But I’m going to study here! That’s what Al and I have arranged. I’m going to go on just the same!” she said, triumphantly. “And he’s going to give me a grand piano for a wedding present!”
This put an end to his softness.
“If you don’t renounce this—mad idea—at once, and finally,” he said, “it will mean—that I wash my hands of you. That you’ll be entirely cut off from your family, including your mother, whom you pretend to love so much. You’ll disgrace—”