Zelda had carried in her heart for weeks the fear of some such disclosure as that which she had just heard from her uncle. In her ignorance of business, she had not even vaguely guessed what had taken so strong a hold upon her father. He had acted strangely during the long summer, but she had attributed his vagaries to the infirmity of years. His curious conduct in the country the night she met him with Pollock had troubled her greatly, but she had spoken of it to no one. He had seemed himself again. He had, indeed, treated her with something more than his habitual deference since their return to town.
Zelda went at once to the living-room where her father usually sat with his newspaper at this hour, but he had not come home; and she went up to her own room, glad of a respite. She had acted her part so long; she had defended him in her own heart and by her own acts; she had even sought to clothe him in her thoughts with something of the dignity, the nobility even, of honorable age; but this was now at an end. It was clear that a crisis had been reached; and while the purely business aspect of the situation did not trouble her at all, she felt that her relations with her father could never again be the same. She had been shielding him, not only from the contempt of her kindred, but from her own distrust as well; and now that this was at an end, she went slowly to her room with a new feeling of isolation in her heart.
She made a light and put aside her hat and coat with the studied care that we give to little things in our perplexities. Then she unlocked the drawer of her desk in which she kept her mother’s book. It opened at the page that had meant so much to her, that had been her guide and her command, and she pondered the sentences anew. When she heard her father come in she went down in her street dress, with the little book in her pocket, slowly and with no plan formed.
Dameron was on his knees before the living-room fire, and he started slightly when he heard her step.
“It’s much cooler, Zee. We came in from the country just in time.”
“Yes, it is chilly to-night. It must be nearly time for heavy frosts.”
“Frost? Yes; it is time for a great frost. Yes; a deadly frost is due. I am watching it; I am watching it,”—and he seemed to forget himself for a moment and she looked at him wonderingly, not knowing what he meant.
He stood with his back to the flame, his hands behind him, and regarded Zelda warily, in a way that had grown habitual of late.
“Where have you been, Zee?” he asked.
“I went down to Zimmer’s to look at some pictures they are showing there; and on my way home I stopped at Uncle Rodney’s.”