“But—­if there’s anything in it—­why can’t I see it as well as you and Veronica?  After all, I’m their mother.”

“Perhaps that’s why it takes you longer, Mummy.  You think of their bodies more than we do, because they were part of your body.  Their souls, or whatever it is, aren’t as real to you just at first.”

“I see,” said Frances, bitterly.  “You’ve only got to be a mother, and give your children your flesh and blood, to be sure of their souls going from you and somebody else getting them.”

“That’s the price you pay for being mothers.”

“Was Frank’s soul ever more real to you, Dorothy?”

“Yes.  It was once—­for just one minute.  The night he went away.  That’s another queer thing that happened.”

“It didn’t satisfy you, darling, did it?”

“Of course it didn’t satisfy me.  I want more and more of it.  Not just flashes.”

“You say it’s the price we pay for being mothers.  Yet if Veronica had had a child—­”

“You needn’t be so sorry for Veronica.”

“I’m not.  It’s you I’m sorriest for.  You’ve had nothing.  From beginning to end you had nothing.

“I might at least have seen that you had it in the beginning.”

“You, Mummy?”

“Yes.  Me.  You shall have it now.  Unless you want to leave me.”

“I wouldn’t leave you for the world, Mummy ducky.  Only you must let me work always and all the time.”

“Let you?  I’ll let you do what you like, my dear.”

“You always have let me, haven’t you?”

“It was the least I could do.”

“Poor Mummy, did you think you had to make up because you cared for them more than me?”

“I wonder,” said Frances, thoughtfully, “if I did.”

“Of course.  Of course you did.  Who wouldn’t?”

“I never meant you to know it, Dorothy.”

“Of course I knew it.  I must have known it ever since Michael was born. 
I knew you couldn’t help it.  You had to.  Even when I was a tiresome kid
I knew you had to.  It was natural.”

“Natural or unnatural, many girls have hated their mothers for less.  You’ve been very big and generous.

“Perhaps—­if you’d been little and weak—­but you were always such an independent thing.  I used to think you didn’t want me.”

“I wanted you a lot more than you thought.  But, you see, I’ve learned to do without.”

She thought:  “It’s better she should have it straight.”

“If you’d think less about me, Mother,” she said, “and more about Father—­”

“Father?”

“Yes.  Father isn’t independent—­though he looks it.  He wants you awfully.  He always has wanted you.  And he hasn’t learned to do without.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s sitting out there in the garden, all by himself, in the dark, under the tree.”

Frances went to him there.

“I wondered whether you would come to me,” he said.