But there were primal instincts at work that night out in the scented garden, and this gentleman, in conventional evening dress, suddenly reverted to the caveman who had seen his woman and quite definitely meant to have her. So with a certain ruthlessness that I discovered afterwards was typical of the man, he refused to let me go, but stormed the fortress of my heart with most exceeding suddenness. He brushed aside all my objections and the words and sentences chosen with such care, knocked down my carefully erected barriers and swept me off my feet, and swamped and drowned and deluged me in love, and with ’What does all that matter? You belong to me,’ he took me in his arms and kissed me with a kiss that thrilled while it subdued me. It seemed as if I had been with him in some dim, past age and then had somehow lost him, and had been restless ever since, striving to find what I had lost, and yet had been unconscious of the thing I sought until I found it, in a moment, in his arms. As father and I went home I spoke to him with subtlety and with guile. ’Daddy, how old was mother when you married her?’ ’Eighteen. Why, darling?’ ’Just my age now.’ ’Oh, nonsense, Meg, I quite decline to have a grown up daughter, you’re only eight!’ ’Have you ever felt it was too young for her to marry.’ ’Never,’ said father with great vigour, ’it was just the right age.’ ’Do you believe in love at first sight, daddy?’ ’Why, yes, I think I do in some cases. I loved your mother the moment I saw her, and then there’s your friend Dante, little ’un, and——’ ’Then, father, may I marry Captain Ellsley, please?’ But my father was not consistent, neither was he humble. He behaved like a man who not only desired the office of a Bishop, but was actually a whole bench of them at that moment, and intended therefore to ’have his children in subjection with all gravity.’ He said he’d never in all his life heard anything quite so preposterous, he’d hardly seen the hulking chap (we do not see ourselves as others see us. Michael is an inch and a half shorter than father), never even noticed if he ate with his knife or not, so was it likely that——’ ’But, father, Dante——’ ’Yes, but he didn’t marry the girl, as you’ve often said, Meg.’ Thus did I fall into my own pit, and in the net which I had spread for another were my own feet taken. The Bench of Bishops preferred not to discuss the subject further, so I went upstairs to bed in utter desolation, because I couldn’t give up Michael even though father was so displeased with me. But when he came upstairs ages afterwards he scratched on my door and said,— ’Are you Meg?’ ’Oh, daddy, of course I am.’ He came in then. ’How many?’ he asked. ’Four.’ ’Oh, darling! never in all the years do I remember any tragedy that took more than three, even when you were so worried about "Adam-and-Eve’s" family!’