His sullen despair brought him to even lower depths. In half-sober
moments he began to realize that his daughter feared and despised him.
She had come to feel the distinction between her parents, and she had
done the perfectly obvious thing in following the instincts of the
gentle blood that was in her: she had cast her lot with her mother. He
forgot his own aspirations and hopes for her in this bitter hour. He
wanted to hurt her, so that she might cry out with him in ugly rage
against the smug, serene paragon. If he only could bring Mary to his
level, so that Christine might no longer be so arrogantly proud of the
blood that came through the Portmans.
He drove himself at last into such a condition of hatred for all that
was good and noble that he would have hailed with joy the positive
proof that his wife had been untrue to him!
All day long he had been singularly abstemious. His brooding had
caused him to forget or to neglect the appetite that mastered him.
Toward evening he resumed his drinking, however, mainly for the
purpose of restoring his courage, which had slumped terribly in this
estimate of himself.
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