Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/174

150 tone vexed him. She was calm, disinclined to argue, behaving as if the arrangement were quite decided: he would have been better pleased if she had cried or lost her temper.

"It's very easy to say that; but, after all, you're not independent. You say you want to get work as a governess; but that's only an excuse for not going away with me."

"You never let me do anything for you."

"I don't ask you to. I never demand anything of you. I'm not a tyrant; but that's no reason why you should want to desert me; you're the last person I have."

Janet hated arguments and talk about affairs which were obviously settled. They had talked for almost an hour, they could neither of them gain anything from the conversation, and yet her father seemed to delight in prolonging it. She did not wish to defend her course. She would willingly have allowed her father to put her in the wrong, if only he had left her alone to do what both of them wanted.

"You want to pose as a kind of martyr, I suppose. Your father hasn't treated you well, he only loved your sister; you've a grievance against him."

"No, indeed; you know it's not so."

The impossibility of answering such charges, all the unnecessary fatigue, had brought her very near crying: she felt the lump in her throat, the aching in her breast. Be a governess? Why, she would willingly be a factory girl, working her life out for a few shillings a week, if only she could be left alone to be straight forward. The picture of the girls with shawl and basket leaving the factory came before her eyes. She really envied them, and pictured herself walking home to her lonely garret, forgotten and in peace.

"But that's how our relations and friends will look upon your conduct." Rh