“Once.”
“And that once? What did you say?”
“I wrote her,” answered Dr. Barnhelm slowly, “that I was coming back here to live, and that if she ever needed a roof to shelter her, that she—she could come.”
“And in that letter,” Dr. Crossett went on relentlessly, “did you say, ‘You are my daughter; I love you’?”
“No.”
“Do you want her to come back?”
“No.”
“Martin! Think of what that means.”
“What else have I done for six months, but think?”
“Very well.” Dr. Crossett gave up in despair. “We will say no more about it. You are a sick man, mind and body; that is all that we must think of now. Do you practice?”