She had made him her grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day.

She had romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him in her gowns.

He had never been long enough separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced on his attention.

His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him that she was a taller child in later years--and had taught him little more.

And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a woman rushed over his mind.