She stepped back. “Yes,” she agreed, sadly. “I guess you can, if you want to. I was afraid you would take it this way; it is natural you should, I guess. I hope, though, by and by, when you have had time to think it all over, you may be a little more reconciled and, maybe, not quite so bitter. What has happened isn’t really any one’s fault. You must see that; you will by and by. You couldn’t have stopped it; I couldn’t; nobody could. It just happened, same as lots of things happen to us poor humans. Whether we like ’em or not doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference. They happen, just the same.” He turned on her, looked her over from head to foot. “Good Lord A’mighty!” he sneered. “Good Lord! I have lived a good many years and I thought I had run afoul of about every kind of cussedness there was, but this beats ’em all. Isn’t there _any_ limit? Wasn’t it bad enough to play the hypocrite when there was something to be gained by it, when it helped me to keep my eyes shut to what was going on behind my back? Wasn’t that enough, without playing it now? Nobody’s fault! Huh! It was somebody’s fault--oh, yes! It was mine for being such a blind, innocent jackass as to trust her--and you. Ah-h!... There, that is enough.” It was more than enough, it was a little too much. Reliance stepped between him and the door. “Foster Townsend,” she cried, “you shan’t go until you take that back, or at least hear what I have to say about it. You know I’m not a hypocrite. That is one thing I never have been. And, since you said it yourself first, you are right, partly right, when you say it was your fault. If you hadn’t been just what you always have been, so set on drivin’ everybody along the road you wanted ’em to travel, you and Esther might not have come to this pass. You couldn’t have stopped her marryin’ the Griffin boy--I don’t believe all creation could have done that--but you might have held it off for a while, and saved all this dreadful business. You couldn’t drive her. Every time you tried it you got into trouble. And now this! She is a Townsend, just as you are yourself.” “Townsend! Bah! She is a Clark, that’s what she is. Her father was a Townsend and he was a soft-headed fool; but he wasn’t a hypocrite. She’s a Clark, that’s where the hypocrisy comes from.”