Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/351

 of appurtenances of a home for many children and for the woman to bear a single child for her justification for ease all her life; that became to Marjorie base and despicable.

Still the church bells, booming.

A car turned in at the house and Marjorie saw her father on the rear seat; in the silence she heard his voice speaking to Martin; now he was on the stairs. She arose and went to the middle of her room when he rapped and called to her in a low tone.

She said, "Please come in, father."

"So you're still here; Martin telephoned forty minutes ago that you had come home. He reached me at the club."

"Yes," she said. "I've been reading mother's letters." Then, "We all had our part in killing Billy, didn't we, father? And of course he had his part in killing himself; and nobody meant to. That's what Gregg said even about them out there, at Cragero's; nobody meant to."

He gazed at her straight without speaking until, after a few moments, he asked, "You've come home to stay, Margy?"

"Have you, father?"

His eyes remained on hers, straight; they gained distance, gazing through her, and lost the distance again. He did not speak.

"That's not fair; I know it now, father," she said, catching breath quickly. "I haven't asked mother to come home. I'll stay here now; of course, I'll stay near you, if you want me to. But about coming home—me; of course I've not done that."

Yet he waited.

"Home, father; home's a sort of fairy place, isn't