“It’s nothing that I’ve done.  It’s something that was done to my mother and myself.”  He found that after all he could not bear to speak of it, and began to hurry on, saying loudly, “Oh, it doesn’t matter!  You poor little thing, why should I bother you when you’re dog-tired with an old story that can’t affect us in the least!  It’s all over; it’s done with.  We’ve got our own lives to lead, thank God!”

She would not let him hurry on.  “What was it, Richard?” she insisted, and added timidly, “I see I’m vexing you, but I know well it’s something that you ought to tell me!”

He walked on a pace or two, staring at the pavement.  “Ellen, I’m illegitimate.”  She said nothing, and he exclaimed to himself, “Oh, God, it’s ten to one that the poor child can’t make head or tail of it!  She probably knows nothing, absolutely nothing about these things!” Into his deep concern lest he had troubled the clear waters of her innocence there was creeping unaccountably a feeling of irritation, which made him want to shout at her.  But he mumbled, “My father and mother weren’t married to each other....”

“Yes, I understand,” she said rather indignantly; and after a moment’s silence remarked conversationally, “So that’s all, is it?” Then her hand gripped his and she cried, “Oh, Richard, when you were wee, did the others twit you with it?”

Oh, God, was she going to take it sentimentally?  “No.  At least, when they did I hammered them.  But it was awful for my mother.”

“Ah, poor thing,” she murmured, “isn’t it a shame!  Mrs. Ormiston is always very strong on the unmarried mother in her speeches.”

He had a sudden furious vision of how glibly these women at the Suffrage meeting would have talked of Marion’s case and how utterly incapable they would have been to conceive its tragedy; how that abominable woman in sky-blue would have spoken gloatingly of man’s sensuality while she herself was bloomed over with the sensual passivity that provokes men to cruel and extravagant demands.  That nobody but himself ever seemed to have one inkling of the cruelty of her fate he took as evidence that everybody was tacitly in league with the forces that had worked towards it, and he found himself unable to exempt Ellen from this suspicion.  If she began to chatter about Marion, if she talked about her without that solemnity which should visit the lips of those who talk of martyred saints, there would begin a battle between his loves, the issue of which was not known to him.  He said with some exasperation:  “I’m not talking of the unmarried mother; I am talking of my mother, who was not married to my father....”