The words, coming from her lips, were like
the refrain of an old ballad, but the man remained stolid.
"Daddie! My Daddie! Oh, Daddie, are yeh mad at me, really--truly mad at
me!"
She touched him lightly upon the arm. Should he have turned then he
would have seen the fresh, laughing face, with dew-sparkling eyes, close
to his own.
"Oh, Daddie! My Daddie! Pretty Daddie!"
She stole her arm about his neck, and then slowly bended her face toward
his. It was the action of a queen who knows that she reigns
notwithstanding irritations, trials, tempests.
But suddenly, from this position, she leaped backward with the mad
energy of a frightened colt. Her face was in this instant turned to a
grey, featureless thing of horror. A yell, wild and hoarse as a brute-
cry, burst from her. "Daddie!" She flung herself to a place near the
door, where she remained, crouching, her eyes staring at the motionless
figure, spattered by the quivering flashes from the fire. Her arms
extended, and her frantic fingers at once besought and repelled. There
was in them an expression of eagerness to caress and an expression of
the most intense loathing. And the girl's hair that had been a splendor,
was in these moments changed to a disordered mass that hung and swayed
in witchlike fashion.
Again, a terrible cry burst from her. It was more than the shriek of
agony--it was directed, personal, addressed to him in the chair, the
first word of a tragic conversation with the dead.
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