CHAPTER XXII.
A REJECTED SUITOR.
All the next day Phebe remained very near to her father, leaving her house-work and painting to sit beside him on the low chair he had carved for her when she was a child.

For the first time she noticed how slowly he caught her meaning when she spoke to him, and how he himself was forgetting how to express his thoughts on his fingers.

The time might come when he could no longer hold any intercourse with her or she with him.

There was unutterable sadness in this new dread.
"You used to laugh and sing," he said, "but you never do it now: never since he robbed me.

He robbed me of that too.