“To me?”
“Yes, to you. When you were little another influence was substituted for mine. The magistrate, the nurseryman, the lover of roses—”
“Your father.”
“Yes; he gave you a taste for trimmed trees, raked alleys, for laws, human and divine, and what more!”
“Why do you lay it up against me that I am like all our race?”
“I saw you changing under my very eyes. Do you know whether I too did not suffer to see it?”
“Oh, you were always so detached from me, and from—”
My father did not finish his sentence, and I shall not finish it now, though I am only too fearful of having discovered its meaning. The respect which he then maintained lays its command upon me, even at this distance. They had both laid bare a hidden wound, which had never quite ceased to bleed. They stood there face to face with that memory between them, terrified perhaps with what they were discovering in the past, not wishing to go farther before me, when an unexpected relief arrived.
Mother came in. She had probably heard their voices from her room and had hastened, all a-tremble, to prevent the conflict going farther. With her came the household peace.
“What is the matter?” she asked gently.