Mr. Challoner always opened doors smartly. Thus, when the outer door of the “Room,” which gave on to a small lobby where wet coats were hung, gave a quick rattle of latch, she knew, with the same certainty as she had known the crisp foot on the gravel, who came. “Have you finished the accounts?” he said. “I can’t get them quite right, father,” she said. “I think----“ “You have the bills and the receipts, have you not?” he said. “Where are they?” Helen resented this, but silently; no shadow of it appeared in her face or voice. “They are all here,” she said. “I have ninepence more than I should.” Mr. Challoner sat down and counted up the silver and pence, arranging them in neat shilling heaps with all the care he would have given to a total of millions. Then rejecting her addition, he added up the receipted bills, and her mistake, one of pure carelessness, was patent. “That balances them,” he said. “Perhaps I had better do the accounts for the future. If I have to do them in the long run, I may as well do them at once, instead of wasting your time over them.” Helen stood up, her resentment shewing itself a little. “Certainly, if you prefer,” she said. He did not answer, but ran a metal clip neatly through the receipted bills, and swept the coins back into the money-box. Then he turned to her quickly. “What do you intend to do, Helen?” he asked. “As your father, I think I have a right to ask you, since you have shewn no sign of wishing to tell me.” The gulf between them seemed to her at that moment immeasurably wide, and his tone was harsh and cruel,--it cut her, but cut like a blunt knife, with sawing and tearing. “Father, don’t speak to me like that,” she said. “I can’t bear it, and it does no good. I am trying, and I am going to continue trying, to do my duty to you----“ For one moment the sternness vanished from his face. “You are going to give him up?” he asked. “No; but I am going to live quietly here if you will have me, for the next six months,” she said, “doing my work in the parish just as usual. During that time I will not see Frank. If you wish, I will not even write to him, except just once.” She sat down again opposite him. “I want to do something for you, which is hard for me,” she said. “I want to make you believe that I am trying to be a good daughter to you. I know we disagree vitally and essentially. But is that any reason why the dearness of our human relations should be diminished?” Her voice sank, but looking at his face she could see that the momentary brightness as he asked the last question had vanished again, and he sat looking, not at her, but out of the window, without replying. “Father,” she said, gently, “I have spoken to you.” He shook his head, then looked at her. “It is useless,” he said. Then suddenly the chilling reserve and silence of the last days gave way like ice before the South wind.