He drew her gently to him.
"There's the one great danger of two people who have grown near to each other separatin'. When they, meet again, they each think the other has changed. They look at each other with different eyes, Peg. An' that's what yer doin' with me. So long as I was near ye, ye didn't notice the roughness o' me speech an' the lack o' breedin' an' the want o' knowledge. Ye've seen and listened to others since who have all I never had the chance to get. God knows I want YOU to have all the advantages that the wurrld can give ye, since you an' me counthry—an' the memory of yer mother—are all I have had in me life these twenty years past. An' that was why I urged ye to go to England on the bounty of yer uncle. I wanted ye to know there was another kind of a life, where the days flowed along without a care or a sorrow. Where poverty was but a word, an' misery had no place. An' ye've seen it, Peg. An' the whole wurrld has changed for ye, Peg. An' from now you'll sit in judgment on the dead and gone days of yer youth—an' in judgment on me—"
She interrupted him violently:
"What are ye sayin' to me at all! I sit in judgment on YOU! What do ye think I've become? Let me tell ye I've come back to ye a thousand times more yer child than I was when I left ye. What I've gone through has only strengthened me love for ye and me reverence for yer life's work. I MAY have changed. But don't we all change day by day, even as we pass them close to each other. An' if the change is for the betther, where's the harm? I HAVE changed, father. There's somethin' wakened in me I never knew before. It's a WOMAN I've brought ye back instead o' the GIRL I left. An' it's the WOMAN'LL stand by ye, father, even as the child did when I depended on ye for every little thing. There's no power in the wurrld'll ever separate us!"
She clung to him hysterically.
Even while she protested the most, he felt the strange new note in her life. He held her firmly and looked into her eyes.
"There's one thing, Peg, that must part us, some day, when it comes to you."
"What's that, father?"
"LOVE, Peg."
She lowered her eyes and said nothing.