“Yes, I think I see, Harry.”

Then she surprised him. “I’m going on the stage,” she said, “and be a great actress when I’m grown up.”

His heart gave a leap and a lurch. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I want to. And because you didn’t. It’ll be as if you had been an actor instead of a minister — only it’ll be me.”

A bewildering enough statement to any one but the one who made it and the one to whom it was made. She was trying to say that here was the law of compensation working. But she didn’t know this. She had never heard of the law of compensation.

Her gentle mother fought her decision with all the savagery of the gentle.