“It’s chiefly about Sybil,” he said. “I want her to give up seeing this boy.”
“Don’t be a martinet, Anson. Nothing was ever gained by it.”
(She thought, “They must be almost to Salem by now.”) And aloud she added, “You’re her father, Anson; why don’t you speak?”
“It’s better for you. I’ve no influence with her.”
“I have spoken,” she said, thinking bitterly that he could never guess what she meant.
“And what’s the result? Look at her, going off at this hour of the night....”
She shrugged her shoulders, filled with a warm sense of having outwitted the enemy, for at the moment Anson seemed to her an enemy not only of herself, but of Jean and Sybil, of all that was young and alive in the world.
“Besides,” he was saying, “she hasn’t proper respect for me ... her father. Sometimes I think it’s the ideas she got from you and from going abroad to school.”
“What a nasty thing to say! But if you want the truth, I think it’s because you’ve never been a very good father. Sometimes I’ve thought you never wanted children. You’ve never paid much attention to them ... not even to Jack ... while he was alive. It wasn’t ever as if they were our children. You’ve always left them to me ... alone.”
The thin neck stiffened a little and he said, “There are reasons for that. I’m a busy man.... I’ve given most of my time, not to making money, but to doing things to better the world in some way. If I’ve neglected my children it’s been for a good reason ... few men have as much on their minds. And there’s been the book to take all my energies. You’re being unjust, Olivia. You never could see me as I am.”