I didn't go, of course. I just stood there twisting my handkerchief in my fingers; and, of course, right away he saw me. He had sat down then. "Mary, didn't you hear me?" he demanded. "Yes, sir, but--Father, I _can't_ go back to that school," I choked. And I began to cry. "But I tell you that you must." I shook my head. "I can't." "Do you mean that you defy me as you did your Aunt Jane this morning?--that you refuse to go back to school?" "Yes, sir." For a minute he sat and stared at me just as Aunt Jane had done; then he lifted his head and threw back his shoulders as if he was throwing off a heavy weight. "Come, come, Mary," he said sternly. "I am not a patient man, and my temper has reached the breaking point. You will go back to school and you will go now. I mean that, Mary." "But, Father, I _can't_" I choked again; and I guess there was something in my face this time that made even him see. For again he just stared for a minute, and then said: "Mary, what in the world does this mean? Why can't you go back? Have you been--expelled?" "Oh, no, sir." "Then you mean you won't go back." "I mean I _can't_--on account of Mother." I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't had to. I didn't want to tell him, but I knew from the very first that I'd have to tell him before I got through. I could see it in his face. And so, now, with his eyes blazing as he jumped almost out of his chair and exclaimed, "Your mother!" I let it out and got it over as soon as possible. "I mean, on account of Mother--that not for you, or Aunt Jane, or anybody will I go back to that school and associate with folks that won't associate with me--on account of Mother." And then I told it--all about the girls, Stella Mayhew, Carrie, and how they acted, and what they said about my being Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because I was a Mary and a Marie, and the ice-cream, and the parties they had to give up if they went with _me_. And I know I was crying so I could hardly speak before I finished; and Father was on his feet tramping up and down the room muttering something under his breath, and looking--oh, I can't begin to tell how he looked. But it was awful. "And so that's why I wish," I finished chokingly, "that it would hurry up and be a year, so Mother could get married." "_Married!_" Like a flash he turned and stopped short, staring at me. "Why, yes," I explained; "for if she _did_ get married, she wouldn't be divorced any longer, would she?" But he wouldn't answer. With a queer little noise in his throat he turned again and began to walk up and down, up and down, until I thought for a minute he'd forgotten I was there. But he hadn't. For after a while he stopped again right in front of me. "So your mother is thinking of getting married," he said in a voice so queer it sounded as if it had come from away off somewhere.