The man gazed at her vacantly. He had not expected to see his daughter that night, and he was not prepared with any explanation. Weakly he tried to turn the tables. "Where have you been?" he asked, plaintively, "leaving your poor old father all alone like this----" She deigned no reply. He knew where she had been. "It's the truth, I suppose?" she repeated. "I want to hear it from your own lips." "Well, you see, my dear," he began, "we are very poor----" "Is it true?" Rada's lips were compressed together; she was drawing long deep breaths. He went on mumbling. "We must live. I had debts. They had to be paid somehow. A thousand pounds----" "So it is true. You've sold Castor for a thousand pounds! You pretended that you were doing it with my permission. Oh father! oh father!" Her mood changed with its usual lightning velocity. Her eyes were brimming over with tears. Her father was the one man with whom she always sought to hold her temper in sway. It was the instinct of a lifetime. Pitiful, degrading object as he was, long ago as she had given up all hope of effecting any reformation in him, of making him, at least, clean, and manly, and wholesome, he was yet her father, and she had lived with him ever since the death of her mother when she was little more than a child. His deterioration had been gradual; she had fought and struggled against it. She had taken upon herself responsibilities unsuited to a girl of her age, but all her efforts had been in vain. She despised the degraded old man, and that because she saw him with no prejudiced eyes, she saw him for what he was, but at the same time--he was her father. Regardless of his protests she began to clear away the bottles from the table; she did so by force of habit, though she knew quite well that as soon as her back was turned he would be after them again; there had been times, however, when he had not allowed her to exercise even this authority, when he had stormed in violent fashion, when he had even struck her. On this occasion, however, he ventured nothing more than a feeble protest, lolling back in his chair, smiling foolishly.