"I'm not a hard man naturally," he went on, in his tranquil voice, "but I have to be obeyed." "Why?" I demanded. "Why should you be obeyed more than any one else?" "Because I mean to be. That must be enough--" "But it isn't," I insisted. "I've no intention of obeying you--" He broke in with some haste: "Oh, there's no question of you, my dear young lady. I've nothing to do with you. I'm speaking of my son. He must obey me, or take the consequences. And the consequences will last as long as he lives. I'm not one to speak rashly, or to speak twice. So that's what I'm putting to you. Do you think--do you honestly think--that you're improving your position by ruining a man who sooner or later--sooner rather than later--will lay his ruin at your door and loathe you? Come now! You're a clever girl. The case is by no means beyond you. Think, and think straight." "I am thinking, sir. I'm thinking so straight that I see right through you. My father used to say--" "No reminiscence, please." "Very well, then; we'll let the reminiscence go. But you're thinking of committing a crime, a crime against Hugh, a crime against yourself, a crime against love, every kind of love--and that's the worst crime of all--and you haven't the moral courage to shoulder the guilt yourself; you're trying to shuffle it off on me." "My good woman--" But nothing could silence me now. I leaned forward, with hands clasped in my lap, and merely looked at him. My voice was low, but I spoke rapidly: "You're talking to bewilder me, to throw dust in my eyes, to snare me into taking the blame for what you're doing of your own free act. It's a kind of reasoning which some girls would be caught by, but I'm not one of them. If Hugh is ruined in the sense you mean, it's his father who will ruin him--but even that is not the worst. What's worst, what's dastardly, what's not merely unworthy of a man like you but unworthy of any man--of anything that calls itself a male--is that you, with all your resources of every kind, should try to foist your responsibilities off on a woman who has no resources whatever. That I shouldn't have believed of any of your sex--if it hadn't happened to myself." But my eloquence left him as unmoved as before. He whispered with Mrs. Billing. The old lady was animated, making beats and lunges with her lorgnette. "So that what it comes to," he said to me at last, lifting himself up and speaking in a tired voice, "is that you really mean to pit yourself against me." "No, sir; but that you mean to pit yourself against me." Something compelled me to add: "And I can tell you now that you'll be beaten in the end."