"I came back on the nine o'clock train." "Where is your mother?" "She is at Atlantic City. I told her that I wouldn't stay." The last sentence startled Dr. Scott even more than Cora's unexpected appearance. He unlocked the door and picked up the valise. There was a new tone in her sweet voice, a tone which disturbed him, but when he got the lamp lighted and had a good look at her round little face, it would doubtless seem imaginary. Surely it could not be that she had come home so as to be near Richard Lister! When the lamp was lit, it seemed to reveal the same Cora, a little white and tired and travel-stained, but surely not wild or violent! "Sit down, my dear!" Cora sat down heavily on a little gilt chair. "Are you hungry?" "No, I thank you," she answered, true to her polite type. Dr. Scott sat himself down on the second step. "What does this return mean, my dear? You went away to have a change." Cora looked at him, looked long at him. In that look certain messages passed from her to her father. For a long time she did not answer, then she burst into tears. "I am not crying because I want to cry," said she angrily. "Or because I feel like crying. I am tired, that is why I cry. I came home because I couldn't stand the dullness." "The dullness!" Dr. Scott was bewildered. "Of Atlantic City!" "I want something to do," demanded Cora, "something for my mind. You have always treated me like a baby. You've sent me to school and put me out of your thoughts. You don't even talk to me intelligently; I mean that you don't talk to me as if I were intelligent. You talk to Miss Thomasina and Dr. Lister in an entirely different way. I can study as well as Richard and--and as--" but the name of her rival Cora could not pronounce. "I have a better mind than Walter. Walter can't do anything but make money. You should hear him with his friends at Atlantic City, you should hear him only ten minutes! And he wants me to like those people!" "My dear--" But Cora had not said all she had to say. "Mother thinks I have failed because I am not engaged to Richard. He never thought of me. I am convinced that he never thought of me. It has made me appear like a crazy person. I don't know what the Listers think of me." Then Cora gave her father a shock of many volts. She had not read her padded poets or her Bible in vain. Nor was her paternity entirely without evidence. "I don't wish to go in solemn procession all my days because of the bitterness of my soul." For the first time in his life, Dr. Scott's reaction from a thrilling experience was expressed in terms of money. He determined at that instant that his work on Basil Everman's writings must be paid for; he determined, moreover, that henceforth the whole of his salary should not be handed over as heretofore. He put his arm round his weeping daughter.