"Are you content to live in this misery and die in this wretched hole?
Say something, Nina; have you no sympathy? Have you no word of comfort
for me? I that loved you so."

He waited for a while for an answer, and receiving none shook his fist in
his daughter's face.

"I believe you are an idiot!" he yelled.

He looked round for the chair, picked it up and sat down stiffly. His
anger was dead within him, and he felt ashamed of his outburst, yet
relieved to think that now he had laid clear before his daughter the
inner meaning of his life. He thought so in perfect good faith, deceived
by the emotional estimate of his motives, unable to see the crookedness
of his ways, the unreality of his aims, the futility of his regrets. And
now his heart was filled only with a great tenderness and love for his
daughter. He wanted to see her miserable, and to share with her his
despair; but he wanted it only as all weak natures long for a
companionship in misfortune with beings innocent of its cause. If she
suffered herself she would understand and pity him; but now she would
not, or could not, find one word of comfort or love for him in his dire
extremity. The sense of his absolute loneliness came home to his heart
with a force that made him shudder. He swayed and fell forward with his
face on the table, his arms stretched straight out, extended and rigid.
Nina made a quick movement towards her father and stood looking at the
grey head, on the broad shoulders shaken convulsively by the violence of
feelings that found relief at last in sobs and tears.

Nina sighed deeply and moved away from the table. Her features lost the