Through the smoke and smell and heat, the sensation of her underclothing sticking hotly to her limbs, the constant dogging fear and excitement that beset her, and the causeless twanging of her nerves, there traveled to her brain, along a channel worn smooth by the habit of her thought about the children, the question, “What is it that makes Paul care so much about this?” And the answer, almost lost in the reverberation of all those other questions and answers in her head, was, “It comes from what is best in Paul, his feeling of personal responsibility for the welfare of others.  That mustn’t be hindered.”  Aloud, almost automatically, she said, in a neutral tone, “Paul, I don’t think I can do a single thing for you and Henry, but I’ll go with you and look at him and see if I can think of anything.  Just wait till I get this and the potatoes in the fireless cooker.”

Paul made a visible effort, almost as though he were swallowing something too large for his throat, and said ungraciously, “I suppose I ought to help you in here, then.”

“I suppose so,” said his mother roughly, in an exact imitation of his manner.

Paul looked at her quickly, laughing a little, sheepishly.  He waited a moment, during which time Mark announced that he was going out to the sand-pile, and then said, in a pleasant tone, “What can I do?”

His mother nodded at him with a smile, refrained from the spoken word of approbation which she knew he would hate, and took thought as to what he might do that would afflict him least.  “You can go and sweep off the front porch, and straighten out the cushions and chairs, and water the porch-box geraniums.”

He disappeared, whistling loudly, “Massa’s in the cold, cold ground.”  Marise hoped automatically that Elly was not in earshot to hear this.

She felt herself tired to the point of exhaustion by the necessity always to be divining somebody’s inner processes, putting herself in somebody’s else skin and doing the thing that would reach him in the right way.  She would like, an instant, just an instant, to be in her own skin, she thought, penetrated with a sense of the unstable equilibrium of personal relations.  To keep the peace in a household of young and old highly differentiated personalities was a feat of the Blondin variety; the least inattention, the least failure in judgment, and opportunities were lost forever.  Her sense of the impermanence of the harmony between them all had grown upon her of late, like an obsession.  It seemed to her that her face must wear the strained, propitiatory smile she had so despised in her youth on the faces of older woman, mothers of families.  Now she knew from what it came . . . balancing perpetually on a tight-rope from which . . .

Oh, her very soul felt crumpled with all this pressure from the outside, never-ending!