RoBards stood gazing down at his daughter, eerily beautiful in the moonlight through the rose leaves. He saw her dim hands twitching each at the other. Then they fell still in her lap and she sat as a worn-out farm-wife sits whose back is broken with overlong grubbing in the soil and with too heavy a load home.
For a long time he sorrowed over her, then he went stealthily across his library into the hall, and out to the porch where he looked at the night a moment. He discovered Immy as if by accident, and exclaimed, “Who’s that?”
“It’s only me, Papa, only me!”
“Only you? Why you’re all there is. You’re the most precious thing on earth.”
He put his arm about her, but she sprang to her feet and snapped at him:
“Don’t! If you please, Papa, don’t touch me. I—I’m not fit to be touched.”
She stood away from him, bracing herself with a kind of pride. Then she broke into a maudlin giggle, such as RoBards had heard from the besotted girls in the Five Points. And she walked into the house.
He followed her, and knocked on her door. But she would not answer, and when he tried it, it was locked.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The next morning RoBards heard her voice again. It was loud and rough, drowning the angry voice of her brother, Keith. She was saying: