"Of course, my dear, YOU go on at my expense: it has never been my idea," he smiled, "that you should work for your living.

I wouldn't have liked to see it." With which, for a little again, they remained face to face.

"Say therefore I HAVE had the feelings of a father.

How have they made me a victim ?" "Because I sacrifice you." "But to what in the world ?" At this it hung before her that she should have had as never yet her opportunity to say, and it held her for a minute as in a vise, her impression of his now, with his strained smile, which touched her to deepest depths, sounding her in his secret unrest.

This was the moment, in the whole process of their mutual vigilance, in which it decidedly most hung by a hair that their thin wall might be pierced by the lightest wrong touch.