Perhaps I prove what a child I am still, because I feel that I
should like to have you treat me more as you did when I was learning
to walk. Then you stretched out your hands, and sustained me, and
showed me step by step. Papa, if this is a mood, and I go back
to my old, shallow life, with its motives, its petty and unworthy
triumphs, I shall despise myself, and ever have the humiliating
consciousness that I am doing what is contemptible. No matter how
one obtains the knowledge of a truth or a secret, that knowledge
exists, remains, and one can't be the same afterwards. It makes my
cheeks tingle that I obtained my knowledge as I did. It came like
a broad glare of garish light, in which I saw myself;" and she told
him the circumstances.

He burst into a hearty laugh, and remarked, "Pat did put the ethics
of the thing strongly."

"He made 'the thing,' as you call it, odious then and forever. I've
been writhing in self-contempt ever since. When to be conventional
is to be like a kitchen-maid, and worse, do you wonder at my revolt
from the past?"

"Others won't see it in that light, my dear."

"What does it matter how others see it? I have my own life to live,
to make or mar. How can I go on hereafter amusing myself in what
now seems a vulgar, base, unwomanly way? It was a coarse, rude
hand that awakened me, papa, but I am awake. Since I have met you
I have had another humiliation. As I said, I am not even acquainted
with you. I have never shown any genuine interest in that which
makes your life, and you have no more thought of revealing yourself