"I've made a mistake, papa. I should have said so weeks--ago--from the start. It isn't Albert's fault. It isn't anybody's fault. I've had it all along, this queer feeling all through the engagement and parties, but I kept hoping for your sakes I'd get over it--hoping--in vain--" "Why, of course, Lilly, you'll get over it! It's natural for a young girl to feel--" "No! No! My feeling won't lift! If only I had said nothing the night he--proposed. But mamma was waiting up. She--she pressed me so. It was so hard the way you put it. I know he's a fine fellow. I know, papa, he's thrown big orders in your way. But I can't help being what I am. Please, papa, let me off! Please!" An actual shrinkage of face seemed to have taken place in Mrs. Becker. "What'll we do? What'll we do, Ben?" she kept repeating, rocking herself back and forth in what seemed to border on dementia. "You see, papa, it's only to be a small wedding. We could so easily call things off. I'll take all the blame--" "No! No! No!" "Mamma dear, I'm as sorry--about it as you are, but--" "No! No! She's ruining our lives, Ben--disgracing--" "Lilly, are you sure that you are telling us everything?" "I swear it, papa. I know I'm inarticulate, I don't seem able to explain the terrible state I've been in for days--" "It's nervousness, Lilly." "I tell you, no! I can't make you understand. But I'm not cut out, papa, for what I'm going to settle down to. I'm something else than what you think I am. I guess I--I am a sort of botanical sport, papa, off our family tree. I know what you're going to say, and maybe you're right. I may have more ideas than I have talent, but let me go my way. Let me be what I am." "Lilly, Lilly, let us take this thing step by step, quietly. Surely, daughter, you appreciate the enormity of the situation!" "I do. I do." "Now to go back to the beginning. Did you consent to this engagement of your own free will?" "I did and I didn't." "You didn't?" "Oh, I know you let me decide for myself, but don't you think I felt the undercurrent of your attitudes? All the other girls settling down, as you put it. You and Albert such good friends, and then Albert himself so--so what he should be." "Now you are talking. If your mother and I hadn't felt that Albert was the fine and upright man for their little girl to marry, do you think they would have--" "I know! There we go around in the circle again. Everything is perfect. The little house, Albert's promotion to first assistant. Everything perfect, but me. I don't want it. I don't love him. You hear me! There is something in me he hasn't touched. Respect him? Yes, but respect is only a poor relation to love and comes in for the left-over and the cast-off emotions." "Her head is full of the novels she reads!"