“Yes,” she whispered.
“I'm—I'm not much,” the husky voice ventured on; “but what you said about going away—for my sake—do you think you need to do it?”
“I've made—such a mess of myself,” she choked out.
“Other people were to blame,” he said. “And out of it all, I think you're going to be what—what I dreamed you were. And—and—”
There was another stifling silence. “Yes?” she prompted.
“I wanted to keep out of your life—for your sake,” he went on in his strained, suppressed voice. “But—but if you're not ashamed of me now that you know all”—in the darkness his groping hand closed upon hers—“I wish you wouldn't—go away from me, Maggie.”
And then the surging, incoherent thing in her that bad been struggling to say itself this last half-hour, suddenly found its voice in a single word:
“Father!” she cried, and flung her arms around his neck.
“Maggie!” he sobbed, crushing her to him.
All the way to Cedar Crest they said not another word; just clung to each other in the darkness, sobbing—the first miraculous embrace of a father and daughter who had each found that which they had never expected to have.