"Well, that's another one gone! Congratulations on every one you get over with," he commented, sipping the stinging green fire of his liqueur with satisfaction. Marise thought of nothing amusing to say and was silent. Her father stirred his big body, with the air of some one arousing himself to an effort. The effort seemed to be to say, "Is there anything you want I can get for you?" His daughter was at a loss before the comprehensiveness of this blanket question. "What kind of a thing?" she inquired. He professed himself more at a loss than she. "If I had any idea what, I wouldn't need to ask you, would I?" But he managed, all the same, at least to eliminate some of the things he didn't mean, "Oh, not dresses or hats," and in a moment, after another sip at the liqueur, to give a little more definite idea of what he did, "Something going on, social life; what girls of nineteen are supposed to want." "Oh, you needn't bother. I get enough of that," she answered, "between Mrs. Marbury and Eugenia and Madame Vallery." She was surprised at her father's interest. They seldom talked together, except of what they were to eat, had eaten, or were eating, or of the interminable games of chess which occupied any leisure moments of his and hers which chanced to coincide. He seemed to have something on his mind now. And he always hated the effort of bringing out what was in his mind. He stopped beating about the bush now and said heavily, "You're no fool, Marise. I don't know any of the roundabout ways to say it to you, that a woman would have, but you won't mind that. What I mean is, I suppose--I imagine that's what's at the bottom of all of it--is this. Are you getting a chance to meet the right sort of young man, the kind you'd want to marry? For you will be marrying before long, I suppose." Marise waited a long time before she spoke, so that she would not flame out as she felt. That would not be speaking in her father's vernacular, and if there was one thing which every instinct of Marise's taught her, it was to speak to every one in his own language. Nothing in the world would have induced her to expose her own to other people's casual comments, her own, in which she spoke to herself, bitterly, caustically, skeptically, tragically, as no one had ever heard her speak aloud. When she could command herself to select the right phrase out of her father's vocabulary, she remarked, pushing her tiny coffee-cup away with a gesture of finality, "I don't believe I'm very much of a marrying sort." Her father's comment on this was to say stolidly, "Oh, every girl thinks that." But if he thought he could get a rise out of Marise with this provocation, he was mistaken. She now turned away from the little table and began with an indifferent air to arrange the coal-fire in the grate. They were sitting in the salon. "Don't you like men?" he asked presently. She laughed a little, "To dance with."