"'Sometimes my father had a house at the seaside, sometimes in the country. He would have a yacht, with a party of people who were all paying guests, of course. Or he would take a moor and have people down. And again he would have a place in London.' "'But do you mean to say your father fetched you home to spend your holidays among strangers?' I asked. 'I don't quite understand your father's attitude toward you.' "'I wish I knew myself,' she muttered, looking at her foot. 'You know,' she went on, 'we have always kept up a sort of arrangement in which he can't live without me and I am a passionately devoted daughter. I wouldn't tell any one else this,' she interpolated hurriedly in a whisper, 'but the fact is, I am not a passionately devoted daughter. I used to think I was. All the girls at school used to rave about their parents, so I raved about mine. Girls are fools,' she remarked, abruptly. "'In what way--raving?' I asked. "'Well,' she said, 'they go on and on, meaning no harm, I suppose. You know we used to tell each other we had the most wonderful sweethearts. One girl had a boy in New Zealand. Another was secretly engaged to a man who was in China. All very far away! So I wasn't to be done, and I bragged about a lover in Siberia. When they wanted to know about him I made up a long story. I said he was a Russian and I had met him in London and he'd gone back to Russia and got arrested and sent to Siberia. It was as true as their yarns, I dare say. And it's a fact I used to imagine myself in love with a tall fair man with a yellow beard. There was a Russian at father's house in Pimlico once, but he was an old cuckoo from the Consulate. I didn't like him.' "'I don't think, my dear,' I said, 'that I want to know any more about it. I believe I understand.' "'Yes,' she answered. 'I believe you do. I believed you would understand sooner or later, when I sent for you in London. I was a beast, then, but I don't regret it after all. I feel I could be anything to you, and you'd understand. Oh!' she muttered, clinging to me for a moment and staring across to where the sun, already set beyond the purple mountains, sent up broad bars of gold and crimson, reflected in the calm waters of the Gulf. 'Oh! How I have treated you!' and she sank into a silence of passionate regret that lasted until the darkness enfolded us and we had entered the long desolate _faubourg_." Mr. Spenlove stopped and rose from his seat on his little camp-stool. Walking to and fro in front of the recumbent forms of his brother officers, his hands in his pockets, his head on his breast, he seemed once again to have forgotten them. And they, perceiving by this time the impropriety of mundane interruptions at such a moment, awaited his resumption in silence.