She drew a pace away, holding herself very straight while she threw him a level glance of unqualified contempt. "I didn't mean to hear anything," he argued plaintively. "I was in the room before I understood, and by the time I did, it was too late-- you had finished." "Oh, don't try to explain. I--I hate you!" He held her eyes inquiringly. "Yes," he said in the tone of one who solves a puzzling problem, "I believe you do." She looked away, shaking with passion. "You just better believe it." "But," he went on quietly, "you don't hate your father, too, do you, Miss Graham?" She swung back to meet his stare with one that flamed with indignation. "What do you mean by that, Mr. Duncan?" "I mean," he said, faltering in where one wiser would have feared to venture--"I'm going to give you a bit of advice. Don't you talk to your father again the way you did just now." "What business is that of yours?" "None," he admitted fairly. "But just the same I wouldn't, if I were you." "Well, you ain't me!" she cried savagely. "You ain't me! Understand that? When I want advice from you, I'll ask for it. Until I do, you let me alone." "Very well," he replied, so calmly that she lost her bearings for a moment. And inevitably this, emphasising as it did all that she resented most in him--his education, wit, address, his advantages of every sort--only served further to infuriate the child. "Oh, I know why you talk that way," she said, rubbing her poor little hands together. "Do you?" he asked in wonder. "Yes, I do--you!..." Suddenly she found words--poverty-stricken words, it's true, but the best she had wherewith to express herself. And for a little they flowed from her lips, a scalding, scathing torrent. "It's because you go to church all the time and try to look like a saint and--and try to make out you're too religious for anything, and like to hear yourself givin' Christian advice to poor miserable sinners--like me. You think that's just too lovely of you. That's why you said it, if you want to know. ... Folks wonder what you're doing here, don't they? Guess you know that--and like it, too. It makes 'em look at you and talk about you, and that's what you like. _I_ could tell 'em. You're only here to show off your good clothes and your finger-nails and the way you part your hair and--and all the other things you do that nobody in Noo York would pay any attention to!" He faced her soberly, attentively. She was a little fool, he knew, and making a ridiculous figure of herself. But--his innate honesty told him --she was right, in a way; she had hit upon his weakest point. He was in Radville to "show off," as she would have said, to make an impression and ... to reap the reward thereof. The way she spoke was ludicrous, but what she said was mostly plain truth. He nodded submissively. "A pretty good guess at that," he acknowledged candidly.