"That? Oh, that is my father's little boy," she said indifferently. "The picture was sent me from California several years ago." "But I thought you told me you had no brothers or sisters," said Helena, with a puzzled look. Dolores ran her slender fingers through her silken hair, shaking it down about her like a golden halo. "Well, I have none," she replied. "I am my mother's only child. He is my father's child, and one is not very much related to one's father any way, you know--and surely not at all to his children by another mother." "Why, Dolores King!" cried Helena, now thoroughly shocked. "What strange things you are saying! Not related to one's father? Why, it is just as near and sacred a relation as that of a mother." "Oh, no! child," interrupted Dolores. "Just think what a mother suffers for us, endures for us, goes through for us, from first to last. From the moment we begin to exist, until we can walk alone, we are a physical drain upon our mothers: while our fathers walk free and untrammeled, with only perhaps (and perhaps not even that) the thought of our maintenance to remind them that we have claims upon them. It is only a matter of association and personal pride, which endears most children to their fathers, while their mothers love them naturally. I have never lived with my father, since I was a small infant. I was placed in the care of a nurse, after my mother died, and then my father married again very soon, and my uncle took me home. I am sure my father has no affection for me, and I have none for him. I have seen him but a few times in my life, and I found him in no way attractive to me--and then I always remember how unhappy my mother's brief life was with him, and that makes me almost hate him. So, I am glad we do not meet oftener." "Oh, Dolores," sighed Helena, looking at her beautiful companion with eyes of absolute compassion, "I think it is terrible for you to feel like this towards your own father. I cannot understand it." "Well," confessed Dolores, pausing in the tasks of brushing her hair, and looking, in her dainty white robes, as Aphrodite clothed in mist might have looked had she risen from the sea with an ivory hair brush in her hand; "well, sometimes I cannot understand it either. But I once saw a girl with a queer mark on her brow, like the gash of a dagger; and I was told that it was caused by her father being struck down by a robber, right before her mother's eyes. And when I read my mother's diary, kept during her one year of married life, I think may be I was marked mentally, just that way. I suppose such a thing is possible; and I can no more help my feelings than the girl could help having the mark on her brow." Dolores had struck a deeper truth than she imagined. But Helena's mind was not able to grasp it. She only felt that her friend was more and more of an enigma, and crept into bed with her brain in a state of chaotic confusion, bordering upon fear. CHAPTER IV. A STARTLING VALEDICTORY.