“There is one thing, however, that gives me strange comfort.  At the last she had such dignity!  Her silence seemed fine and brave.  She looked at us from a deep still peace as if, after all her losing of the way, she had at last found it and Herself.  The search has carried her beyond our sight.

“Oh, we are so lonely, father and I. We silently accuse each other.  He thinks my reckless truth-telling destroyed her timid spirit; I think his twenty-five years of tyranny did it.  We both know how she hated our rasping, and we hate it ourselves.  Yet, even at that hour when we stood beside her bed and knew the end was coming, he and I were at sword’s points.  What a hackneyed expression, but how terrible!  Yes, the hateful swords of our spirits, my point toward his breast and his toward mine, gleamed there almost visibly above that little tired creature.  He wanted her for himself even to the last:  I wanted her for Truth—­wanted her to walk up to God dressed in her own soul-garments, not decked out in the rags and tags of those father had tossed to her.

“She spoke only once.  She had been dreaming, I suppose, and a wonderful illuminated smile broke over her face.  In the midst of what seemed a sort of ecstasy, she looked up and saw father watching her.  She shivered away from him with one of those apologetic gestures she so often used.  ’It wasn’t a heavenly vision,’ she said—­she knew he wouldn’t have believed in that—­’it was only that I thought my little brown baby was in my arms.’  She meant me, Honora,—­think of it.  She had gone back to those tender days when I had been dependent on her for all my well-being.  My mummy!  I gathered her close and held her till she was gone, my little, strange, frightened love.

“Now father and I hide our thoughts from each other.  He wanted to know if I was going to keep house for him.  I said I’d try, for six months.  He flew in one of his rages because I admitted that it would be an experiment.  He wanted to know what kind of a daughter I was, and I told him the kind he had made me.  Isn’t that hideous?

“I’ve no right to trouble you, but I must confide in some one or my heart will break.  There’s no one here I can talk to, though many are kind.  And Ray—­perhaps you think I should have written all this to him.  But I wasn’t moved to do so, Honora.  Try to forgive me for telling you these troubles now in the last few days before your baby comes.  I suppose I turn to you because you are one of the blessed corporation of mothers—­part and parcel of the mother-fact.  It’s like being a part of the good rolling earth, just as familiar and comforting.  Thinking of you mysteriously makes me good.  I’m going to forget myself, the way you do, and ‘make a home’ for father.

     “Your own