Barbara had to regretfully admit to herself, he had frightened her, and she had turned away from him, as her foster mother had.
"That became my job, an extra one besides any work I could find from those who could stand to look at me. I became your guardian, in ways only I could find, without you knowing who I was."
Barbara knew the answer, so she did not ask the question: "Why didn't you come to me and tell me you were my father?"
He would be afraid she would reject him, as his wife had.
Paul's words came back to her then: "Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love."
She wondered if her father had known them. Whether he had or not, he lived them. He had found no love from his wife after the war, so he had put love in her best friend. Had he found love from Julia? He may or may not have, but he did find love in loving her, their daughter. And she felt her father's love for her, more deeply than she had felt anyone's love, except perhaps Stephen's.
Barbara needed to tell him. "Mother was unfair in telling me you had walked out on us."
"No, it was all she could do. She had to give herself a reason for rejecting me. She made it up in her mind that I was no good. She could explain that to you, when you would be old enough to understand. By then, what she kept telling herself, that I was unfaithful, became what she could live with in her own mind and heart.
"She had always been a woman of great faith. She just could not exercise it as she prayed she could. That is, after all, the reason I left our house. I did not want to be the instrument of such a challenge to her faith. If it failed her, I would blame myself. Better to let her have a reason to reject me that was not my face.
Being unable to look at me would challenge her faith.
I tried to help her by being unfaithful to her. It gave her the reason she needed, so she could live with herself and her faith. She needed something to handle her guilt, so my unfaithfulness gave her a reason to transfer it into anger. It was all just the war, Barbara. It does change us all."
She did not agree that it all could be blamed on war, but would not challenge him. He might have lost half of his face in an accident, or his limbs. Or, she thought, remembering Stephen's wife, her mind. Some of us are called to endure some things we never imagined we would be. Some of us can handle it. Some of us can't. Stephen was handling it by being faithful to his wife.