If you have been with that farm hand you are starting young. Has
anything happened between you?"
Clara walked to the door and confronted her father. The hatred of him, born
in that hour and that never left her, gave her strength. She did not know
what he was talking about, but had a keen sense of the fact that he, like
the stupid, young man in the shed, was trying to violate something very
precious in her nature. "I don't know what you are talking about," she said
calmly, "but I know this. I am no longer a child. Within the last week I've
become a woman. If you don't want me in your house, if you don't like me
any more, say so and I'll go away."
The two people stood in the darkness and tried to look at each other. Clara
was amazed by her own strength and by the words that had come to her. The
words had clarified something. She felt that if her father would but take
her into his arms or say some kindly understanding word, all could be
forgotten. Life could be started over again. In the future she would
understand much that she had not understood. She and her father could draw
close to each other. Tears came into her eyes and a sob trembled in her
throat. As her father, however, did not answer her words and turned to go
silently away, she shut the door with a loud bang and afterward lay awake
all night, white and furious with anger and disappointment.
Clara left home to become a college student that fall, but before she left
had another passage at arms with her father.
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