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It was not until a week had passed after Louis Akers' visit to the house that Lily's fa that week had been an unhappy one She e, and Grace, finding her alternating between ale aloofness, was bewildered and hurt Mademoiselle watched her secretly, shook her head, and set herself to work to find out rong It was, in the end, Mademoiselle who precipitated the crisis

Lily had not intended to make a secret of the visit, but as tily difficult to tell about it She should, she knew, have spoken at once, and it would be hard to explain why she had delayed

She o to her father with it It was he who had forbidden her to see Akers, for one thing And she felt nearer to her father than to her mother, always Since her return she had developed an almost passionate adrandfather's attitude toward hily partizan, and she watched her father, day after day, fighting his eternal battles with Anthony, so for a principle like a rock while the seas of old Anthony's wrath washed over and often engulfed hi with her own perplexities, and blindly reaching out for a hand to help her But she could not bring herself to confession She would wander into her father's dressing-roo on the aret hi her But he was inarticulate and rather shy with her He had difficulty, so absence at school and caed for his neckties to make into doll frocks

Once she said: "Could you love a person you didn't entirely respect, father?"

"Love is founded on respect, Lily"

She pondered that She felt that he rong

"But it does happen, doesn't it?" she had persisted

He had been accusto abstractions for years She used to talk about religion in the same way So he smiled and said: "There is a sort of infatuation that is based on so quite different"

"On what?"

But he had rather floundered there He could not discuss physical attraction with her

"We're getting rather deep for eleven o'clock at night, aren't we?"