Richard Vont looked at her long and steadily. Marcia was, as usual, dressed with extreme simplicity, but her clothes were always good, and economy in boots and hats was a vice which she had never practised. When she told him that she had passed into a world apart from his, he realised it. The only wonder was that she had ever been his daughter!
"To marry you!" he repeated. "It's one of those of your own loose way of thinking, eh? One of those who have forgotten the laws of God and have set up for themselves some graven image in which there's nought of the truth?"
"The man who wishes to marry me, father," she said warmly, "is a man of honour and position. Can't you believe me when I assure you that there is another way of looking at what you consider so terrible? I have been as faithful to my vows as you to your marriage ones. The man whom I am told you still hate has never wavered in his loyalty to me, any more than I have in my fidelity to him. Can't you believe that to some extent, at least, we have sanctified our love?"
James Vont passed his hand a little wearily over his forehead.
"It's blasphemous gibberish that you're talking," he declared. "If you had come back to me, Marcia, in rags and in want, maybe there is something in my heart would have gone, and I'd have taken you and we'd have found a home somewhere far away. But to see you sitting there, soft and well-spoken, speaking of your success, pleased with your life, turns that very hatred you spoke of into fury! You and your learning and your writing of books! Why, you're ignorant, woman, more ignorant than the insects about you. You don't know right from wrong."
"Aye, but listen," he went on. "You've children, eh?"
"No children to bear your shame, eh? And why not?"
She looked for a moment into his eyes, and then away.
"That may be the one weak spot," she confessed.
"The one weak spot!" he repeated bitterly. "Shall I tell you what you are, you women who live cheerfully with the men you sell yourselves to, and defy the laws of God and the teaching of the Bible? You're just wastrels and Jezebels. Ay, and there's the garden gate, Marcia, and my heart's as hard as a flint, even though the tears are in your eyes and you look at me as your mother used to look. It's no such tears as you're shedding as'll bring you back into my heart. Your very prosperity's an offence. You carry the price of your shame on your back and in your smooth speech and in this false likeness of yours to the world you don't belong to. If it's duty that's brought you here, you'd better not have come."