Zeus Gildersedge stretched himself in his chair and yawned. He habitually felt ill at ease in his daughter’s presence. She had a queer knack of upsetting the equanimity of his avarice and jarring the mean structure he called his soul. They had nothing in common. Even on the tritest subjects they were out of sympathy.
“You seem to be away a good deal,” said the man, remembering the words Rebecca had thrown up at him from the grass.
“Am I?”
“What do you do with yourself all day?”
“Wander in the woods, watch the birds, collect flowers, bathe in the sea.”
“Bathe—do you!”
“Every day.”
“Beginning to find your father a dull dog, eh? We don’t do a vast amount of entertaining. Rather a quiet place this,” and he laughed.
Joan dangled her hat by the strings and watched her father with a supreme and unconscious gravity. She was ever attempting to understand his mental condition; she had never yet succeeded.
“I often wonder why we have no friends,” she said.