“I must know; I want to know all about it. We can’t be real friends unless there’s complete confidence. That’s the best of being the ages we are. As things are, we can’t have very much to hide, but later on people get all sorts of things that they have done and said that they keep locked up.”
“No,” said Janet, smiling, “I haven’t got anything to hide. I’ll try and tell you all you want to know. But it’s very difficult, about father.”
“Why?” said Tony.
“Well, you see, I haven’t known other people’s fathers at all, and up to quite lately I didn’t think there was anything peculiar about mine, but just lately I’ve been wondering. You see there’s never been any particular affection, there hasn’t been any question of affection, and that’s,” she stopped for a moment, “that’s what I’ve been wanting. I used to make advances when I was quite tiny, climb on his knee, and sometimes he would play, oh! beautifully! and then suddenly he would stop and push me aside, or behave, perhaps, as though I were not there at all.”
“Brute!” said Tony between his teeth, driving the oar furiously through the water.
“And then I began to see gradually that he didn’t care at all. It was easy enough even for a girl as young as I was to understand, and yet he would sometimes be so affectionate.” She broke off. “I think,” she said, looking steadily out to sea, “that he would have liked to have killed me sometimes. He is so furious at times that he doesn’t in the least know what he’s doing.”
“What did you do when he was like that?” asked Tony in a very low voice.
“Oh, one waits,” she said very quietly, “they don’t last long.”
She spoke dispassionately, as though she were outside the case altogether, but Tony felt that if he had Morelli there, in the boat with him, he would know what to do and say.
“You must get away,” he said.