"Why not?" she demanded, and suddenly her voice rang harsh again. "Why could I not have gone to him? Why didn't he wish it?"
Nick hesitated for a single instant. Then, "It was for your own sake," he said, not looking at her.
"You mean he suffered?"
"While he remained conscious—yes." Nick spoke reluctantly. "It didn't last long," he said.
She scarcely seemed to hear him. "And so you tricked me," she said; "you tricked me while my father was lying dying. I was not to see him—either then or after—for my own sake! And do you think"—her voice rising—"do you think that you were in any way justified in treating me so? Do you think it was merciful to blind me and to take from me all I should ever have of comfort to look back upon? Do you think I couldn't have borne it all ten thousand times easier if I could have seen and known the very worst? It was my right—it was my right! How dared you take it from me? I will never forgive you—never!"
She was on her feet as the passionate protest burst from her, but she swayed as she stood and flung out her arms with a groping gesture.
"I could have borne it," she cried again wildly, piteously. "I could have borne anything—anything—if I had only known!"
She broke into a sudden, terrible sobbing, and threw herself down headlong upon the earth, clutching at the moss with shaking, convulsive fingers, and crying between her sobs for "Daddy! Daddy!" as though her agony could pierce the dividing barrier and bring him back to her. Nick made no further attempt to help her. He sat gazing stonily out before him in a sphinx-like stillness that never varied while the storm of her anguish spent itself at his side.
Even after her sobs had ceased from sheer exhaustion he made no movement, no sign that he was so much as thinking of her.
Only when at last she raised herself with difficulty, and put the heavy hair back from her disfigured face, did he turn slightly and hold out to her a small tin cup.