“But I mean, not the ordinery atachment between two married people. I mean Love—the reel thing.”
“I see! Why, of course I do.”
“Did you ever read Pope, father?”
“Pope? Why I—probably, chicken. Why?”
“Then you know what he says: ‘Curse on all laws but those which Love has made.’”
“Look here,” he said, sudenly laying a hand on my brow. “I beleive you are feverish.”
“Not feverish, but in trouble,” I explained. And so I told him the story, not saying much of my deep Passion for Adrian, but merely that I had formed an atachment for him which would persist during Life. Although I had never yet exchanged a word with him.
Father listened and said it was indeed a sad story, and that he knew my deep nature, and that I would be true to the End. But he refused to give me any money, except enough to pay back Hannah and Carter Brooks, saying:
“Your mother does not wish you to go to the Theater again, and who are we to go against her wishes? And anyhow, maybe if you met this fellow and talked to him, you would find him a disapointment. Many a pretty girl I have seen in my time, who didn’t pan out acording to specifications when I finaly met her.”
At this revalation of my beloved father’s true self, I was almost stuned. It is evadent that I do not inherit my being true as steal from him. Nor from my mother, who is like steal in hardness but not in being true to anything but Social Position.