“I should let it flash out again if I were you,” said Rainshore, with a certain grimness. And Cecil perceived the truth of the maxim that a parent can never forgive his own fault in his child. II. “You’ve come to sympathise with me,” said Geraldine Rainshore calmly, as Cecil, leaving the father for a few moments, strolled across the terrace towards the daughter. “It’s my honest, kindly face that gives me away,” he responded lightly. “But what am I to sympathise with you about?” “You know what,” the girl said briefly. They stood together near the balustrade, looking out over the sea into the crimson eye of the sun; and all the afternoon activities of Ostend were surging round them--the muffled sound of musical instruments from within the Kursaal, the shrill cries of late bathers from the shore, the toot of a tramway-horn to the left, the roar of a siren to the right, and everywhere the ceaseless hum of an existence at once gay, feverish, and futile; but Cecil was conscious of nothing but the individuality by his side. Some women, he reflected, are older at eighteen than they are at thirty-eight, and Geraldine was one of those. She happened to be very young and very old at the same time. She might be immature, crude, even gawky in her girlishness; but she was just then in the first flush of mentally realising the absolute independence of the human spirit. She had force, and she had also the enterprise to act on it. As Cecil glanced at her intelligent, expressive face, he thought of her playing with life as a child plays with a razor. “You mean----?” he inquired. “I mean that father has been talking about me to you. I could tell by his eyes. Well?” “Your directness unnerves me,” he smiled. “Pull yourself together, then, Mr. Thorold. Be a man.” “Will you let me treat you as a friend?” “Why, yes,” she said, “if you’ll promise not to tell me I’m only eighteen.” “I am incapable of such rudeness,” Cecil replied. “A woman is as old as she feels. You feel at least thirty; therefore you are at least thirty. This being understood, I am going to suggest, as a friend, that if you and Mr. Vaux-Lowry are--perhaps pardonably--contemplating any extreme step----” “Extreme step, Mr. Thorold?” “Anything rash.” “And suppose we are?” Geraldine demanded, raising her chin scornfully and defiantly and dangling her parasol. “I should respectfully and confidentially advise you to refrain. Be content to wait, my dear middle-aged woman. Your father may relent. And also, I have a notion that I may be able to--to----” “Help us?” “Possibly.” “You are real good,” said Geraldine coldly. “But what gave you the idea that Harry and I were meaning to----?” “Something in your eyes--your fine, daring eyes. I read you as you read your father, you see?”