But she did not wish it now. At the bottom of that passing
desire to look again at her father's face there was no strong affection.
She felt no scruples and no remorse at leaving suddenly that man whose
sentiment towards herself she could not understand, she could not even
see. There was only an instinctive clinging to old life, to old habits,
to old faces; that fear of finality which lurks in every human breast and
prevents so many heroisms and so many crimes. For years she had stood
between her mother and her father, the one so strong in her weakness, the
other so weak where he could have been strong. Between those two beings
so dissimilar, so antagonistic, she stood with mute heart wondering and
angry at the fact of her own existence. It seemed so unreasonable, so
humiliating to be flung there in that settlement and to see the days rush
by into the past, without a hope, a desire, or an aim that would justify
the life she had to endure in ever-growing weariness. She had little
belief and no sympathy for her father's dreams; but the savage ravings of
her mother chanced to strike a responsive chord, deep down somewhere in
her despairing heart; and she dreamed dreams of her own with the
persistent absorption of a captive thinking of liberty within the walls
of his prison cell.
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