She stood very straight in the doorway, and I was aware at once of something tense and strung up about her.
The skin of her face was tight and drawn and her eyes bright and resolute.
There was no diffidence about her tonight and no childishness.
She said, addressing Symmington, but giving him no title (and I suddenly reflected that I never had heard her call him anything. Did she address him as father or as Dick or what?):
"I would like to speak to you, please. Alone."
Symmington looked surprised and, I fancied, not best pleased.
He frowned, but Megan carried her point with a determination unusual in her.
She turned to Elsie Holland and said,
"Do you mind, Elsie?"
"Oh, of course."
Elsie Holland jumped up. She looked startled and a little flurried.
She went to the door and Megan came farther in so that Elsie passed her.
Just for a minute Elsie stood motionless in the doorway looking over her shoulder.
Her lips were closed, she stood quite still, one hand stretched out, the other clasping her needlework to her.
I caught my breath, overwhelmed suddenly by her beauty.
When I think of her now, I always think of her like that - in arrested motion, with that matchless deathless perfection that belonged to ancient Greece.
Then she went out shutting the door.
Symmington said rather fretfully,
"Well, Megan, what is it?
What do you want?"
Megan had come right up to the table. She stood there looking down at Symmington.
I was struck anew by the resolute determination of her face and by something else - a hardness new to me.
Then she opened her lips and said something that startled me to the core.
"I want some money," she said.
The request didn't improve Symmington's temper.
He said sharply,
"Couldn't you have waited until tomorrow morning?
What's the matter, do you think your allowance is inadequate?"
A fair man, I thought even then, open to reason, though not to emotional appeal.
Megan said, "I want a good deal of money."
Symmington sat up straight in his chair. He said coldly:
"You will come of age in a few months' time.
Then the money left you by your grandmother will be turned over to you by the Public Trustee."
Megan said:
"You don't understand.
I want money from you."
She went on, speaking faster:
"Nobody's ever talked much to me about my father.
They've not wanted me to know about him.
But I do know that he went to prison and I know why.
It was for blackmail!"
She paused.
"Well, I'm his daughter.
And perhaps I take after him.
Anyway, I'm asking you to give me money because - if you don't -" She stopped and then went on very slowly and evenly - "if you don't - shall say what I saw you doing to the cachet that day in my mother's room."
There was a pause.
Then Symmington said in a completely emotionless voice,
"I don't know what you mean."
Megan said, "I think you do."
And she smiled.