The warning brought back all my misgivings, and as I walked home I knew perfectly well that the happiest years were behind me and that, to a large extent, my Rose was no more. I had lost her. Even if Mrs. Stratton proved to be wrong and the world did not talk, I had lost her. For the reason that we should be living an unnatural life. A lonely girl of eighteen has too little in common with a man of forty-five whose attitude to her is parental. It is not such as he that she would choose for a companion. Being normal, she would choose a younger man, nearer her both in age and aspirations: some one to commit, if necessary, follies with; not an old buffer. This point of division comes in every family, but it can be less poignant with real parents. At any rate, a real father would have no such temptation as could assail me, and might have assailed me had I not always thought so naturally of myself as Theodore’s deputy, his chosen nominee to bring his daughter up and cherish her; to make her (his phrase was always coming back to me) “beat the band.” Would Rose beat the band? Had I been worthy? Can any child be depended upon to react to tuition? Impossible to count on it: the guardian at most can do his best and hope for the best. Hitherto I had not much to reproach myself with; but I now saw that the real testing-time was on us. The real breaking-point too, for every day Rose, as she ripened and matured and became more conscious of adult things, would be growing towards her own life, her own mate, and consequently away from my life and me. Once again I realized how like ashes in the mouth the fruits of parenthood can be. The new generation is always receding from the old; the old pathetically trying to catch up and understand. The metaphor of a stream rushing between the two occurred to me: almost none able to swim and so few bridges! Once again I realized how pitiless life is, in its unresting urgency: moving ever on and on, no matter from what contentment, from what joy: the next moment always more important than this one! * * * * * Rose came back a woman grown. Not short, not tall—the right height—and to my eyes so sweet, so desirable, that I could not understand how any young man could fail to succumb, and I dreaded the time when Ronnie and she would meet. But I need not have done so, for when that moment arrived it was not fraught with passion; indeed, they seemed a little constrained, Ronnie in particular, and it was not until two or three days had passed that the shyness wore off. Whatever Ronnie may have felt, he did not seek Rose’s society unduly. I had proof that, so far as Rose was concerned, there was nothing serious, a little while after, when, regardless of Mrs. Stratton’s nastiness, we had settled down to a very delightful routine _à deux_. During one of our talks Rose was frank about her plan of life.