The pathos in her voice touched him to the quick. "Innocent!" he exclaimed, and held out his arms. She looked at him with a very pitiful smile and shook her head. "No! I can't do that! Not just yet! You see, it's all so unexpected--things have changed altogether in a moment. I can't feel quite the same--my heart seems so sore and cold." He leaned back in his chair again. "Ah, well, it is as I thought!" he said, irritably. "You're more concerned about yourself than about me. A few minutes ago you only cared to know what the doctors thought of my illness, but now it's nothing to you that I shall be dead in a year. Your mind is set on your own trouble, or what you choose to consider a trouble." She heard him like one in a dream. It seemed very strange to her that he should have dealt her a blow and yet reproach her for feeling the force of it. "I am sorry!" she said, patiently. "But this is the first time I have known real trouble--you forget that!--and you must forgive me if I am stupid about it. And if the doctors really believe you are to die in a year I wish I could take your place, Dad!--I would rather be dead than live shamed. And there's nothing left for me now,--not even a name--" Here she paused and seemed to reflect. "Why am I called Innocent?" "Why? Because that's the name that was written on every slip of paper that came with each six months' money," he answered, testily. "That's the only reason I know." "Was I baptised by that name?" she asked. He moved uneasily. "You were never baptised." "Never baptised!" She echoed the words despairingly,--and then was silent for a minute's space. "Could you not have done that much for me?" she asked, plaintively, at last--"Would it have been impossible?" He was vaguely ashamed. Her eyes, pure as a young child's, were fixed upon him in appealing sorrow. He began to feel that he had done her a grievous wrong, though he had never entirely realised it till now. He answered her with some hesitation and an effort at excuse. "Not impossible--no,--maybe I could have baptised you myself if I had thought about it. 'Tis but a sprinkle of water and 'In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.' But somehow I never worried my head--for as long as you were a baby I looked for the man who brought you day after day, and in my own mind left all that sort of business for him to attend to--and when he didn't come and you grew older, it fairly slipped my remembrance altogether. I'm not fond of the Church or its ways,--and you've done as well without baptism as with it, surely. Innocent is a good name for you, and fits your case. For you're innocent of the faults of your parents whatever they were, and you're innocent of my blunders. You're free to make your own life pleasant if you'll only put a bright face on it and make the best of an awkward business." She was silent, standing before him like a little statuesque figure of desolation.