The girl smiled up at him from her low chair. "Daddy," she said softly, "you know what I'm waiting for. You're the one person of my own blood that I can take into full confidence, because you're the only one who doesn't think of my life as a piece of cloth to be cut and fitted to Morgan's measure, whether it suits me or not. You've never said much, but I've known you were on my side." For the first time in her memory her father was not immediately responsive. His hand falling on her bright head rested there with a dubious touch, and his eyes were irresolutely clouded. "I wonder, dear," he said slowly, "whether, after all, I don't agree with the others--in part, at least. All my life I've been an insurgent, scorning the caution of the provident, and paying a beastly stiff price for my mutiny against smugly accepted rules of the game." "A woman has only one life to share," she answered firmly. "It's not exactly insurgency to insist on loving the man." After a little he inquired, "You _are_ fond of Morgan, though, aren't you? If there were no Boone Wellver, for instance, you might even love him, mightn't you?" "There is a Boone, though." She spoke quietly but with a finality that seemed to close the doors upon discussion, and a silence followed. Finally, however, Larry Masters cleared his throat in an embarrassed fashion. "I spoke a while back of wanting to see you protected in the shelter of a home. Since we've embarked on the subject, I'm going to tell you something more. A certain truth has been carefully withheld from you, and I believe you ought to know it." "What truth?" Her eyes widened a little, and the man shifted his position uneasily. "The true realization of how deeply we all stand in Tom Wallifarro's debt," he made blunt response. "I've always known," she hastily declared, "that he's been a fairy godfather, and given me things--luxurious things--that mother's income couldn't run to." Larry Masters laughed with a shade of bitterness. "Your mother has never had any income, Anne. As for myself, there's never been a time since you were a baby when I could make buckle and tongue meet. That's the whole ugly truth. House-rent, clothes, food, education, everything, necessities as well as comforts, livelihood as well as luxuries--the whole lot and parcel have come to my wife and my daughter from the generous hand of Tom Wallifarro. But for that, God knows what their lives would have been." Anne Masters rose and stood unsteadily on the rag rug before the stone flaggings of the hearth. "You mean ... that we ... have ... been actual dependents on his kindness--that we've just been ... charity ... parasites?" The girl's hands came to her bosom and a shiver ran through her. The warm flood of colour left her cheeks, and her eyes were deep with chagrined amazement. The man did not answer the questions, and she went on with another: