In the large parental bedroom the only light was Audrey’s candle.  Mrs. Moze was lying on the right half of the great bed, where she had always lain.  She might have lain luxuriously in the middle, with vast spaces at either hand, but again habit was too powerful.

The girl, all in white, held the candle higher, and the shadows everywhere shrunk in unison.  Mrs. Moze blinked.

“Put the candle on the night-table,” said Mrs. Moze curtly.

Audrey did so.  The bedroom, for her, was full of the souvenirs of parental authority.  Her first recollections were those of awe in regard to the bedroom.  And when she thought that on that bed she had been born, she had a very queer sensation.

“I’ve decided,” said Mrs. Moze, lying on her back, and looking up at the ceiling, “I’ve decided that your father’s wishes must be obeyed.”

“What about, mother?”

“About those shares going to the National Reformation Society.  He meant them to go, and they must go to the Society.  I’ve thought it well over and I’ve quite decided.  I didn’t tell Miss Ingate, as it doesn’t concern her.  But I felt I must tell you at once.”

“Mother!” cried Audrey.  “Have you taken leave of your senses?” She shivered; the room was very cold, and as she shivered her image in the mirror of the wardrobe shivered, and also her shadow that climbed up the wall and bent at right-angles at the cornice till it reached the middle of the ceiling.

Mrs. Moze replied obstinately: 

“I’ve not taken leave of my senses, and I’ll thank you to remember that I’m your mother.  I have always carried out your father’s wishes, and at my time of life I can’t alter.  Your father was a very wise man.  We shall be as well off as we always were.  Better, because I can save, and I shall save.  We have no complaint to make; I should have no excuse for disobeying your father.  Everything is mine to do as I wish with it, and I shall give the shares to the Society.  What the shares are worth can’t affect my duty.  Besides, perhaps they aren’t worth anything.  I always understood that things like that were always jumping up and down, and generally worthless in the end....  That’s all I wanted to tell you.”

Why did Audrey seize the candle and walk straight out of the bedroom, leaving darkness behind her?  Was it because the acuteness of her feelings drove her out, or was it because she knew instinctively that her mother’s decision would prove to be immovable?  Perhaps both.

She dropped back into her own bed with a soundless sigh of exhaustion.  She did not blow out the candle, but lay staring at it.  Her dream was annihilated.  She foresaw an interminable, weary and futile future in and about Moze, and her mother always indisposed, always fretful, and curiously obstinate in weakness.  But Audrey, despite her tragic disillusion, was less desolated than made solemn.  In the most disturbing way she knew herself to be the daughter