“You have been wonderfully quiet,” she still went emotionally on; “I could tell that from Ira’s manner. But I wasn’t sure. I’m not yet; and for that reason, to save hideous trouble, I made up my mind to tell you. There is a little strangeness about your father, and it comes out when he is contradicted. Except for that he is splendid. I don’t just know what it is, but contradiction makes him wretched; he--he loses control of himself.” She was speaking faster, with an obvious increasing difficulty. “I did it, once. We hadn’t been married long, and it was in the garden. He had just come back from the counting-house, and he was carrying a light cane, a wanghee. And, Epes, he struck me with it. Oh, not very hard; not, really, too hard. I didn’t say a word. I stood for a second, quite frozen, and then I turned to walk out of the garden, to leave him, forever. I intended to go, but it did hurt. I was confused, and instead of finding the gate I walked into the geraniums and fainted. So, you see, I stayed.” Epes Calef drew in an audible harsh breath. “You mustn’t judge him!” she exclaimed eagerly. “I am sure it spoiled a large part of his life. He carried me into the house, and neither of us have referred to it since. Yes, it hurt him beyond speech; for weeks he slept hardly at all. Epes, Epes, I can’t have it happen to him again. He is your father and you must help. You love him, too, I am certain; and what he arranges is always, always best.” She was so tremulous, so self-effacing, that he felt he couldn’t bear to hear another word. It was terrible, and as wrong as possible. “He ought to be denied,” Epes said in a strong voice. “Now that you have told me this I think it might be what he, what we all need; perhaps I shall have to.” “That is not for you to judge,” Clia Calef told him with a resumption of dignity. “You would be very wicked indeed; and not only, perhaps, harm Ira permanently, but me as well. I have to live with him, and not you. Epes, you have the ignorance of youth; but if I can help it I won’t have you upsetting our life.” He was, he saw, literally nothing before her love for the man who had struck her with his wanghee. “It would spoil everything,” she half whispered to herself. “I have tried hard, so long.” Epes rose sharply. “You must go to bed,” he directed. “If you are not careful you will be sick.” He was deathly sick. She clung to him. “Promise me, promise you will do as he says.” “I have already decided that,” he answered in his weary, dead voice. Epes, with his hand under her arm, conducted her to her room. A wave of warmth flowed into the hall as the door opened and shut, like the soiled enervating breath of a hidden corruption.