He turned his attention upon her as he might have turned it upon some new specimen of viper that had crossed his path and become annoying; and once having looked, he stared and studied her again.

There was no denying that Athalie Greeves was pretty so far as the modern world counts prettiness. Some of the girls in her set called her “simply stunning,” and the young men of her age called her a “winner.” She was fair and fat and fourteen with handsome teeth and large, bold, dark eyes. But the lips around the teeth were too red and the lashes around the eyes overladen. Her fairness had been accentuated to the point of ghastliness, with a hectic point in each cheek that gave her the appearance of an amateur pastel portrait.

She wore a cloth suit of bright tan, absurdly short and narrow for her size. A dashing little jade-green suede hat beaded in black and white sat jauntily on a bushy head of bobbed and extraordinarily electrified black hair, and whatever kind of eyebrows she had possessed had been effectually plucked and obliterated, their substitutes being so finely penciled and so far up under the overshadowing hat brim as to be practically out of the running. She wore flesh-colored silk stockings and tall, unbuckled, flapping galoshes with astrakhan tops, out of which her plump silken ankles rose sturdily. Her father sat and stared at her for a full minute. No biological specimen had ever so startled or puzzled him. Was this then his child? His and Lilla’s? How unexpected! How impossible! How terrible!

It wasn’t as if she were just Lilla, made young again, pretty and wily and sly, with a delicate feminine charm and an underlying falseness. That was what he had expected. That was what he was prepared for. That he could have endured. But this creature was gross—coarse—openly brazen, almost as if she had reverted to primeval type, and yet—vile thought! He could see all the worst traits of himself stamped upon that plump, painted young face.

Athalie gave a self-conscious tilt to her head and inquired in a smug voice: “Well, how do you like me?”

The man started, an unconscious moan coming to his lips, and dropped his head into his hands then swung himself up angrily and strode back and forth across the far end of the room, glaring at her as he walked and making no reply. It was obvious that he was forcing himself to study her in detail, and as his eyes dropped to her feet he paused in front of her and inquired harshly: “Haven’t you any—any hosiery?”

Perhaps the good attendant angels smothered a hysterical laugh, but Athalie, quite wrought upon in her nerves by this time and not a little hurt, stretched out a plump silken limb indignantly.

“I should like to know what fault you have to find with my stockings?” she blazed angrily. “They cost four dollars and a half a pair and are imported, with hand-embroidered—”

He looked down at the smooth silk ankles helplessly.

“You are too stout to wear things like that!” he said coldly and let his glance travel up again to her face. “How did they let you get so stout anyway?”

Her lips trembled for an instant, and real red flared under the powder on her cheek, then she gave her head a haughty toss.

“You aren’t very polite, are you? Lilla said I’d find you that way, but I thought maybe you had changed since she saw you. She told me—”

“You needn’t bother to mention anything that your mother said about me. I shouldn’t care to hear it,” he said coldly.

“Well, Lilla’s my mother, and if I have come to live with you, I shall mention what I like. You can’t stop me!”

There was defiance in the tone and in her glance that swept remindingly toward the pile of luggage at her feet, and he veered away from another encounter.

“Do you always call your mother by her first name? It doesn’t sound very respectful.”

“Oh, bother respect! Why should I respect her? Certainly, I call her Lilla! I had it in mind to call you Pat too, if I liked you well enough, but if you keep on like this I’ll call you Old Greeves! So there! Oh, heck! This isn’t beginning very well—” She pouted. “Let’s start over again. Here Pat, let’s sit down and be real friendly. Have a cigarette?” and she held out a bright little gold case with a delightfully friendly woman-of-the-world air, much as her mother might have done. As she stood thus poised with the golden bauble held in her exquisitely manicured rose-leaf hands she seemed the epitome of all that was insolent and sensual to her horrified and disgusted father. He felt like striking her down. He wanted to curse her mother for allowing her to grow up into this, but most of all he felt a loathing for himself that he had made himself responsible for this abnormal specimen of womanhood. Scarcely more than a child and yet wearing the charm of the serpent with ease.

Then suddenly the shades of all the Silvers looking down upon him from the painted canvases on the wall, the sweetly highborn gentlewomen and gentlemen of strong, fine character, seemed to rise in audience on the scene and bring him back to the things he had been taught and had always deep down in his heart believed, no matter how far he had wandered from their practice. And here was this child, scarcely turned toward womanhood, daring to offer her father a cigarette, daring to strike a match pertly and light one for herself, here in this old Silver house, where grandmothers of four generations had been ladies, and where dear Aunt Lavinia had taught him his golden texts every Sunday morning—taught him about purity and righteousness. Oh, it was all her sweet, blind innocence—her ignorance of the world, of course, yet sweet and wonderful. And to have this child—his child—transgressing the old order in her playful, brazen way! It was too terrible! His child! Flesh of his flesh!

“Athalie!”

“Oh, don’t you smoke? I thought all real men smoked. Lilla said” She pursed her lips and lifted her cigarette prettily.

“Athalie!” he thundered.