"They tell me your man's joined th' army." That was the formula, but it needed speaking. And when spoken it was, after a moment uncannily tense, it was not as Alderman Munt J.P. had expected and intended to utter it. Instead of being quite impersonal, the tone and the manner were rude and grim. Somehow they had thrown back to an earlier phase of autocratic parenthood. Melia turned very white. It did not seem possible for her to say anything beyond a defiant "yes." Breathing hard, she stood looking stonily at her father. "When did he go?" "Monday." The tone of Melia was queerly like his own. Josiah rolled the scrub of whisker under his chin between his thumb and forefinger, and then slowly transferred the weight of his ponderous body from one massive foot to the other. "Don't seem to be doing much trade." "Not much." But the tone of Melia rather implied that it was none of his business even if such was the case. "Will ye be able to carry on?" Melia didn't know. Her father didn't either. He was inclined to think not, but without expressing that opinion he stood with narrowed eyes and pursing his lips somberly. "Where's the books?" he said abruptly. The desire uppermost in Melia was to tell him in just a few plain words that the books were no concern of his and that she would be much obliged if he would go about his own affairs. But for some reason she was not able to do so. She was no longer afraid of him; years ago she had learned to hate and despise him; but either she was not strong enough, not a big enough character to be openly rude to him, or the subtle feelings of a daughter, long since rejected and forgotten, may have intervened. For after a horrible moment, in which devils flew round in her, she said impassively, "Don't keep none." "Not books! Don't keep books!" The man of affairs caught up the admission and treated it almost as a young bull in a paddock might have treated a red parasol. "Never heard the like!" He cast a truculent glance round the half denuded shop. "No wonder the jockey has to make compositions with his creditors." Melia flushed darkly. She would have given much had she been able at that moment to order this father of hers out of the shop, but every minute now seemed to bring him an increasing authority. The Dad, the tyrant and the bully whom she had feared, defied and secretly admired, was now in full possession. At bottom, sixteen years had not changed him and it had not changed her. Had the man for whom she had wrecked her life had something of her father's quality she might have forgiven his inefficiency, his tragic failure as a human being, or at any rate have been more able to excuse herself for an act which, look at it as one would, was simply unforgivable.