"Alice," he said softly, almost in a whisper, and closing the door after him, he came to the middle of the room and stood near her, though still without touching her quivering body.
"They side with Dick always," she repeated furiously, "and you will side with him, too—you will side with him, too!"
For a long pause he looked at her in silence, waiting until the convulsive tremors of her limbs should cease.
"I shall never side against my daughter," he said very slowly. "Alice, my child, my darling, are you not really mine?"
A last quivering sob shook through her and she grew suddenly still. "They will tell you things about me and you will believe them," she answered sternly.
"Against you, Alice? Against you?"
"You will blame me as they do."
"I love you," he returned, almost as sternly as she had spoken.
An emotional change, so swift that it startled him, broke in her look, and he saw the bright red of her mouth tremble and open like a flower in her glowing face. At the sight a sharp joy took possession of him—a joy that he could measure only by the depth of the agony out of which he had come. Without moving from his place, he stretched out his arms and stood waiting.
"Alice, I love you," he said.