"There's no harm done, my dear. I don't believe it was just what I needed, after all."
He smiled with a new, indescribable sweetness and weariness.
"I think I could sleep, now," he said.
At noon Stanwood was quite himself again; himself and more, he thought, with some surprise. He would not have owned that it was a sense of victory that had put new life into his veins. Victory over a vulgar passion must partake somewhat of the vulgarity of the passion itself. No, Stanwood was not the man to glory in such a conquest. But he could, at last, glory in this daughter of his.
As she told him with sparkling eyes of her beautiful ride through the night, through the beautiful brooding night, her courage and her innocence seemed to him like a fair, beneficent miracle. But he made no comment upon her story. He only sat in the doorway, looking down the road where he had watched her approach a few weeks ago, and when she said, noting his abstraction, "A penny for your thoughts, papa!" he asked, in a purely conversational tone, "Elizabeth,"—she always loved to hear him say "Elizabeth,"—"Elizabeth, do you think it would make Nick very mad indeed if we were to go snacks?"
