"Now he does not want to see me. He does not like me to talk or read to him. It makes it hard for Hermie, for she has everything to do. She thinks father is shy of me and that it will wear away."
"No," she sighed; "you are both wrong. Father, in spite of his helplessness, sees far more clearly. He was always quick to read everyone. He knows"--her voice faltered--"that I cannot love him now that I know what he did. Oh, I hate him for deserting Hermie and letting her bear it!" She pressed her hand to her side, as if speaking of some disease that gave her pain. "How can I help it, Mr. Durgan? I despise him, and he knows it."
"I dare say he does. He knows, of course, that the whole world could regard him with no feelings but those of hatred and scorn."
She stopped short in her walk. In a minute she said, "I think I will go back again, Mr. Durgan. I cannot bear that you should speak that way to me about my own father."
He smiled. "You seem to have some filial affection left."
"Did you only say it to make me feel angry?"
"Yes; that is why I said it; but, at the same time, you must remember that the world would certainly judge as you have said; and if the ties of kindred did not give a closer embrace than the world does, there would be no home feeling for any of us; there would be no bright spark of the sacred fire of the next world in this."
"'Fire.' We think of heaven as light, not heat."
"And we think of hell as heat, not light; yet we know light and heat to be one and the same thing; and both are the supreme need of life, and both are the only adequate symbols of love."
Many a red flag and gay pennon of autumn was now flying on the heights of Deer. The leaves of the stunted oak wood were floating and falling, and below, the chestnuts were yellowing, burr and leaf. The weeds were sere and full of ripe seed, and the shrubs of ripe berries. Birds of passage in flocks were talking and calling, eating their evening meal, or settling, a noisy multitude, in verdant lodging for the night.
"I always wonder where they come from, or where they are going," said the girl. "I used to long so often, in all the nights and days I have been on this mountain, to be able to fly away as the birds fly; and now, since Eve died, what we have suffered makes me feel that just to live here, away from the worse sorrows of the world, would be enough happiness always."