“A favor! You call it a favor!” She stared at him, his hardness still astonishing her after all these years. And then she felt her resistance begin to wilt. Sooner or later all her arguments were doomed. She never won with him. The sheer physical fact of him, massive and dominant, exhausted her after a while. “I—I never wanted to hate you, Father. You were all I had. I wanted to love you. But you wouldn’t let me,” she almost whispered. _I mustn’t go on like this. I’ll cry_, she thought desperately. “I hate you because you hate me!” she flung at him. He looked at her for some time before he answered quietly, “What makes you think I hate you, Laura?” She was so taken aback by this that she could only stammer at him. “I don’t know, but you know you do.” “Oh, come now. I haven’t been _that_ harsh with you.” _It’s a trap! A trap! He wants to soften me up. He wants to see me whimpering. Oh, God, if only I could stop him, freeze him up, like other men._ “You’ve been brutal,” she said harshly and the sobs were crowding close in her throat. “You’ve treated me like a slave. Worse! you’ve beaten me sometimes for nothing. Just for the exercise.” “I never once beat you without a reason,” he said. “You lie!” And her voice was a furious hiss. He glared at her. “I’m not in the habit of lying to you, Laura. Your life has been more than beatings. I sent you to the best schools. I let you go to the college of your choice. I let you join a sorority and paid all your bills. And when you came home and quit like a damn coward—without so much as an explanation, I didn’t force you to go back. I found you a good job with excellent training and a big future. I’ve given you a good comfortable home, a lot of clothes, travel.” His voice was low, controlled, but it was the calm before the storm and he was tense. “I would have traded them all for love.” Her voice broke and she turned suddenly away, afraid to shame herself with tears in front of him. “Let’s not get maudlin,” he said sardonically, and once again smothered the spark of tenderness that had waited so many years in Laura for expression. “All right,” she said sharply. “Let’s not be maudlin. I have a good job here and I’m not going to leave New York. That’s what I came to tell you. Now maybe I’ll better go.” She turned and walked resolutely toward the door, but she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He merely placed himself between the door and Laura and she stopped, afraid to go near him. He smiled slightly at this evidence of his power over her. “Before you leave,” he said, “suppose you explain the filial affection that made you write me to go to hell, in your little billet-doux last week?” “Why did you say you had no daughter?” she flared. “To teach you a lesson.” “Are there any lessons left for you to teach me?” she said. “Quite a few, my dear. You don’t know it all yet, even if you are almost twenty-one.”