Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/177

Rh The door was shut once more. Her father seemed vexed at the interruption so welcome to her.

"Well, I never could persuade you in anything; but I resent the way in which you look on my advice as if it were selfish—I'm only anxious for your own welfare." 

In bed Janet lay awake thinking over the conversation. She had an instinctive dislike to judging any one, especially her father. Why couldn't people who understood each other remain satisfied with their tacit understanding, and each go his own way with out pretence? She was sure her father did not really want her, he was only opposing her desertion to justify himself in his own eyes, trying to persuade himself that he did love her. If he had just let things take their natural course and made no objections against his better judgment, she would not have criticised him; she had never felt aggrieved at his preference for Gertrude: it so happened that she was not sympathetic to him, and they both knew it. Over and over again as she lay in bed, she argued out all these points with herself. If he had said, "You're a good girl, you're doing the right thing; I admire you, though we're not sympathetic," his humanity would have given her deep pleasure, and they might have felt more loving towards each other than ever before. Perhaps that was too much to expect; but at any rate he might have left her alone. Anything rather than all this pretence, which forced her to criticise him and defend herself.

But perhaps she had not given him a chance? She knew that every movement and look of hers irritated him: if only she could have not been herself, he might have been generous. But then, as if to make up for this thought, she said aloud to herself:

"Generosity, logic, and an objection to unnecessary talking Rh