Mrs. Galland entered to find her daughter before the mirror brushing her hair with hectic vigor.  She did not take up the lantern, which Marta had left in the middle of the floor, but seated herself.  Her nice deliberation in smoothing out a wrinkle of her skirt over her knees indicated that she meant to stay a while.  She folded her plump, white hands; a faint touch of color came into her round, pink cheeks; a trace of a smile knitted itself into the corners of her mouth.  She was as she had been—­J’y suis!  J’y reste!—­when the captain of engineers had pleaded with her at the outset of the war to leave the house.  In the reflection of the mirror Marta’s glance caught hers, which was without reproach or complaint, but very resolute.

“Do you like best to keep it all to yourself, Marta?” Mrs. Galland inquired solicitously.

“What?  Keep what?” asked Marta crossly.

“Even if you have been all the way around the world, it might be easier if you allowed me to help you a little,” pursued Mrs. Galland.

“Help!  Help about what?” said Marta.

That reply, as Marta knew now as an expert in deceit, was a mistake.  She was hedging and petulant when she ought to have whirled around gayly and kissed her mother on the cheek, while laughing at such solemnity over a trip of exploration through the tunnel.  Mrs. Galland had caught her prevaricating.  Not since Marta was a little girl of seven had she “fibbed” to her mother; and on that memorable and ethically instructive occasion her mother had regarded her in this same calm fashion.

“At all events,” said Mrs. Galland, “I could help you a little if you would let me comb your hair.  You are combing in a most unsystematic way, I must say.  Systematic, gentle combing is very good for headaches and—­”

There was a twinkle in Mrs. Galland’s eye that was not exactly humor; a persistent twinkle that seemed to shine out of every part of the mirror.  Her curiosity had come to stay; there was no escaping it.  Marta brought her brush down with a bang on the bureau, only to be disgusted with this show of temper which the persistent twinkle had not missed.  Her next impulse, unanalyzed because it was one of the oldest and simplest of impulses, made her spin round and drop on her knees at her mother’s feet, which was just what had happened when she had started to brave out the last lie—­the childhood lie.

Her head buried in her mother’s lap, she was sobbing.  It was many years since Mrs. Galland had known Marta to sob and she was glad that Marta had not forgotten how.  She believed in the value of the law of overflow.  When Marta looked up with eyes still moist, it was with the joyous satisfaction that begins a confession.  Not once during the recital did the smile fade from Mrs. Galland’s lips.  She was too well fortified for any kind of a shock to exhibit surprise.

“You see, I could not tell you—­I—­” Marta concluded, still uncertain what conclusion lay behind her mother’s attitude.