He was now looking at her steadily. "I see. You don't care for the breed, is that it?" "Kenny," she began, a solemn note in her voice, "there is no reason why you and I should hurt each other. If I hurt you just now I am sorry. But I meant what I said. I do not want the pity of Robert Gwynne's son any more than you want to be pitied by the daughter of Rachel Carter. We stand on even terms. I just want you to know that my heart is as stout as yours and that my pride is as strong." He bowed his head. "All my life I have thought of my father as a Samson who was betrayed by a Delilah. I have never allowed myself to think of him as anything but great and strong and good. I grew to man's estate still believing him to be the victim of an evil woman. I am not in the ordinary sense a fool and yet I have been utterly without the power to reason. My eyes have been opened, Viola. I am seeing with a new vision. I have more to overlook, more to forgive in my father than you have in your mother. I speak plainly, because I hope this is to be the last time we ever touch upon the subject. You, at least, have grown up to know the enduring love of a mother. She did not leave you behind. She was not altogether heartless. That is all I can say, all I shall ever say, even to you, about my father." He spoke with such deep feeling and yet so simply that her heart was touched. A wistful look came into her eyes. "I am still bewildered by it all, Kenny," she said. "In the wink of an eye, everything is altered. I am not Viola Gwyn. I am Minda Carter. I am not your half-sister. You seem suddenly to have gone very far away from me. It hurts me to feel that we can never be the same toward each other that we were even this morning. I had come to care for you as a brother. Now you are a stranger. I--I loved being your sister and--and treating you as if you were my brother. Now all that is over." She sighed deeply. "Yes," he said gently, "all that is over for you, Viola. But I have known for many weeks that you are not my sister." "I bear no grudge against you," she said, meeting his gaze steadily. "My heart is bitter toward the man I have always looked upon as my father. But it does not contain one drop of bitterness toward you. What matters if I have walked in darkness and you in the light? We were treading the same path all the time. Now we meet and know each other for what we really are. The path is not wide enough for us to walk beside each other without our garments touching. Are we to turn back and walk the other way so that our unclean garments may not touch?" "For heaven's sake, Viola," he cried in pain, "what can have put such a thought into your head? Have I ever said or done anything to cause you to think I--"