you have done—but you did it through deception.” He paused, vainly strove several times to begin again, and finally, with a burst of agony, continued: “And all that I had been gathering together for years, thought after thought, you were capable of overthrowing, as though it were an image of clay! Child, child, could you not understand that I had worked my own way up through you? Now it is all over!” He made an effort to control his pain.
“No, you are too young to comprehend it,” he said, presently; “you do not know what you have done. But you must understand that you have deceived me. Tell me, what had I done to you that you were able to do anything so cruel? Child, child, would that you had told me this even yesterday! Why, ah, why, did you lie so frightfully?”
She heard his words; she knew that all he said was true. He had staggered across the room to a chair that stood near the window that he might lean his head on a table beside it. He rose again, sobbing with anguish, then took his seat once more, and was quiet.
“And I who am not fit to help my old father!” he whispered to himself, “I cannot, I have no call for the work. That is why no one can help me,—all, all that is mine must be dashed to pieces.”
