Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/255

 "Then have your children, Fidelia. Have them, I warn you."

"But I can't!"

"Why not?"

"I can't tell you."

She was piteous, so piteous again, that he could not further goad her. He arose and gazed away from her, wondering. His glance fell upon the red volume on her gay desk. He read the inscription "Diary" stamped in gold on the cover and he picked up the book.

"This is yours?" he asked, turning to her.

"Yes, father Herrick."

"What is in it?"

"Why," she said, "what I do every day."

"What do you do?"

"Why," she said again, "why—"

He spread the book and Fidelia gasped; he merely ran the pages past his thumb but he noticed how the fear that he was examining the book excited her. He held it open but he turned it upside down to himself and handed it to her.

"Read to me," he bid, "your doings for a day."

She took her book but she closed it.

"Why not?" he demanded. "Are you ashamed of what you do?"

"I write what I think," Fidelia said, "besides what I do."

"Are you ashamed of what you think?"

"It's what I think," she replied and she made her book safe by raising herself slightly and thrusting it under her thigh and resting her leg upon it.