very young impression she gave. There was nothing in her face that he could read, nothing of the tensions he sensed in her. The fear he had detected was only evident in the small fluttering of her hands.
“You’re really in trouble, huh?” he said.
She nodded, and as her head came forward slightly, he looked into her eyes. The tensions that weren’t evident in her face lived in her eyes. He smiled at her sympathetically, and watched her draw her underlip in, brake its tremble with white, even teeth. Tears were close; a kind word would precipitate a flood.
He said gently, “Suppose I keep eyes strictly front while you let go and cry yourself out?” He saw the tears start down her cheeks, and turned severely front. Not long after, when the noises of grief had died away, he turned to face her.
Devereaux said, “In my time, lots of people have used me as a father-confessor. All kinds of people.”
She smiled gratefully at him with moist eyes, and his pulse quickened. He stared at her, surprised at her effect on him. Beautiful, he thought to himself regretfully. This unspoiled girl dabbing at her eyes was not the fruit of his forties.
“How bad is it?” he prompted.
“It’s a mess,” she said, accepting him as a confidant.
“Father a completely bad actor?”
“Yes.”
“A tyrant, eh?”
“Much worse than a tyrant.” She hesitated, and there was a look of revulsion in her eyes that haunted his imagination. He picked at the bits she had told him, and brought them closer to his thinking. Reviewing them, they seemed little against the violent emotional currents in the girl. Domineering fathers, like possessive mothers, were a commonplace. The iron fist and the silver cord—as a policeman he’d encountered both more often than not.
He looked at her doubtfully, at a loss, and then his imagination leaped. Much worse than a tyrant, she had said, with revulsion showing in her eyes. He looked at her searchingly, watched shame flushing her cheeks.
“What do you do, if anything?” he said after a long, awkward moment.
“I dance.”
“Ballet?”
She nodded. “Modern. The Graham School.”
“Professionally?”
“I hope to, ultimately.”
“Live home?” Devereaux smiled. “Shut me up any time you like.”
“I live home.”
“Why not make a break, keep house on your own?”
She drew a long breath. “I can’t.”
“You mean,” Devereaux pressed, “your father won’t allow it?”
“Yes. My father won’t allow it,” she said, and her tone told him clearly of bonds and bondage. He waited through a short silence, hoping her bursting need to talk would prevail. He was right. She said, “If he is my father.”
“Don’t you know?” Devereaux exclaimed.
“No. I mean, I don’t know”—she fumbled for words—“I don’t know for certain that he is.”
“But what makes you think that he’s not?”
“It’s something vague.” A hand moved nervously to her face. “It’s what he is, the feeling I have about him. I don’t feel him to be my father.”
Devereaux said impatiently, “Is there something actual that makes you doubt this man is your father?”
“Just impressions.” Her hand moved as if brushing something impeding her vision. “Impressions only.”
Devereaux regarded her critically. There were strong suggestions of irrationality, even hoax, but the emotional distress was real, and the girl had breeding and intelligence. Intelligence, unmistakably. It was in her face and speech and manner.
“I take it, then,” Devereaux said, accepting her as rational and believable, “that there is no infancy-to-now association with him in your recollection. This man, your father, is something recent in your experience?”
“Yes.” She smiled weakly. “Or is it no? He is recent —comparatively, that is. And I have no real infancy recollection of him.”
“When did you first become aware of him as your father?”
“When I was ten. From then on, all through my school life, there were visits, gifts, vacations away with him. But always estranged, never close. In a family sense, I mean. Then, last year, he brought me home to live with him.”
“You boarded out through your school years?”
“Yes. Through school and finishing school.”
“And absolutely no recollections of him prior to your tenth birthday?”
“No. Earlier, I merely knew of him, but vaguely.”
“How did you know of him?”
“From teachers in school, I suppose. From an occasional letter read to me.”
“Didn’t you wonder about it? Kids, even in tender years, have a strong interest in where they came from, a great curiosity about whom they belong to.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t wonder about it. Not consciously, anyhow.” Her face clouded. “Not having a home, in the true sense, I found my adjustment in the school, in my teachers. I remember believing that all children belonged to their schoolmistress and teachers, and to the school itself. I think I believed it quite normal to have a father in some shadowy somewhere who wrote letters and sent occasional gifts.”
“And when you were ten, he came out of his, ah, shadowy somewhere, emerged as an identity, a person?”
“Yes. He appeared suddenly, just before my tenth birthday.”
“Did you accept him as your father then?”
“Yes.”
“Affectionately, glad for a parent?”
She was remembering. “No. At first I resented him, I think. Later, I became afraid of him.”
“Why?”
“He had a way of staring at me, a frightening way of looking at me coldly and critically, as if I were a purchase he had to make up his mind about.”
“He gave you this feeling every time you met?”
“Until my fourteenth birthday. After that, he changed. I could feel the change.”
Devereaux prompted gently, “As
