She read her father's
allegory. Barbarian in so much as her father was, he had beaten this
thing out with the hammer of wisdom. He missed her, but she must not
come back; she had outgrown the old life--he knew it and she was with
him in spirit, in his memory; she understood his picturesque phrases,
borrowed from the large, affluent world about him. Something of the
righteousness and magnanimity of this letter passed into her, giving her
for an instant a sort of peace. She had needed it--needed it to justify
herself, and she had been justified. To return was impossible--she had
known that all along, though she had not admitted it; the struggle had
been but a kind of remorse, after all. That her father should come to
her was also impossible--it was neither for her happiness nor his. She
had been two different persons in her life, and the first was only a
memory to the second. The father had solved the problem for her. He too
was now a memory that she could think on with pleasure, as associated
with the girl she once was.
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