"But instead of helping make the public opinion which would make him less, and Ettie more, respectable, you ask me to help along the present infamous order of things! Oh, papa! don't ask that of me! I have never willingly done anything in my life that I knew you disapproved. Don't ask me to help crush that child now, for I cannot. I cannot desert her now. Don't ask that of me, papa. Why do men--even you good men--make it so hard, so almost impossible for women to be kind to each other? What has Ettie done that such as we should hold her to account. She is a mere child. Fourteen years old in fact, but not over ten in feeling or judgment. She has been deceived by one who fully understood. She did not. And yet _even you_ ask me to hold her responsible! Oh, papa, don't!" She slipped onto her father's knee and took his face in her hands and kissed his forehead. She had never in her life stood against her father or seemed to criticise him before. It hurt her and it vexed him. A little frown came on his face. "Katherine," he said, turning to his wife, "I wish you'd make Gertrude understand this thing rationally. _You_ always have." Mrs. Foster glanced at her daughter and then at her husband. She smiled. "I always have, what dear?" she asked. "Understood these things as I do--as everyone does," said her husband. "You never took these freaks that Gertrude is growing into, and--" The daughter winced and sat far back on her father's knee. Her mother did not miss the action. She smiled at the girl, but her voice was steady, and less light than usual. "No, I never took freaks, as you say, but what I thought of things, or how I may or may not have understood them, dear, no one ever inquired, no one ever cared to know. That I acted like other people, and acquiesced in established opinions, went without saying. That was expected of me. That I did. Gertrude belongs to another generation, dear. She cannot be so colorless as we women of my time--" Her husband laughed. "Colorless, is good, by Jove! _You_ colorless indeed!" He looked admiringly at his wife. "Why, Katherine, you have more color and more sense now than any half dozen girls of this generation. Colorless indeed!" Mrs. Foster smiled. "Don't you think my cheerful, easy reflection of your own shades of thought or mind have always passed current as my own? Sometimes I fancy that is true, and that--it is easier and--pleasanter all around. But--" she paused. "It was not my color, my thought, my opinions, myself. It was an echo, dear; a pleasant echo of yourself which has so charmed you. It was not I." Gertrude felt uneasy, and as if she were lifting a curtain which had been long drawn. Her father turned his face towards her and then toward her mother. "In God's name what does all this mean?" he asked. "Are you, the most level-headed woman in the world, intending to uphold Gertrude in this--suicidal policy--her--this--absurd nonsense about that girl?"