"I believed that when I had done something excellent, if that time ever came, they would be proud of it. My mother was a school-teacher, you know; and I did not see why my father should care. He hates to hear women talk, but writing is different. At least I thought so. Yesterday, just before you came, the subject came up. Rose said she believed I could write a book, and papa was furious at the mere thought. I knew nothing about old-world prejudices, but it seems that a lady would be thought to have disgraced herself in Spain if she wrote a book: and papa is as Spanish as if he had never learned a word of English, although he would be ready to beat anyone that told him so. He did not have a chance to say much yesterday; but I saw what his ideas were and that nothing could change them. "I did not go to sleep at all last night. I sat up trying to think what I should do. Of course I need not tell him what I had done; but should I give it up? That was the question. If I continued, I must tell him of my intention to be a writer. He would forbid it. If I refused to obey, which I do not think I have any right to do, he is quite capable of locking me up. But I cannot go on writing in secret. That would be a great wrong; it would be living a lie. I could not make myself believe that I only wrote for the pleasure of writing: I should know that I longed for the time when I should see my book on somebody's shelf. It seems to me that I cannot give it up. I have much less in my life than most girls. In spite of the hard work, I have felt almost happy while writing. And I am afraid that I have as much ambition as pride. But he is my father. My first duty is to him--I cannot make up my mind. I suppose there should be no struggle; but there is, and I feel as if it were killing me." Trennahan had been the confidant of many women, had listened to many tragic confessions, had seen women in agonies of remorse; but nothing had ever touched him as did this bald statement, abrupt with repressed feeling, of a girl's solitary tragedy. Had her hero been a lover instead of an art, he would have met her confidence with platitudes and a suppressed yawn; but her lonely attitude in the midst of millions and friends, her terrible slavery to an ideal, to a scourging conscience which was at war with all the secretiveness, self-indulgence, and haughty intolerance of restraint which she had inherited with her father's blood, interested him even more profoundly than it appealed to his sympathies. He determined not only to help her, but to watch her development.