“David, do you think mothers, I mean real mothers, have divine intuitions about their children?  Intuitions that, well, say, adopted mothers never have?”

“No, I don’t.  The majority of mothers are vamps.  They think they have a strangle hold on their offspring; a right to mould or bully them out of shape.  The best school I know is run by a woman who says it takes her a year to shake off the average mother; after that the child becomes an individual and you can get a line on it.”

“That’s startling, David.  It’s hard, too, on mothers.”

“Oh!  I don’t know.  I often think if mothers could be friends to their children, real friends, I mean, and not claim what no human being has a right to claim from another, they’d reap a finer reward.  I’d hate to love a person from duty.  The fifth commandment is the only one with a promise.  It needs it!  What is the stuffing in this third sandwich, Doris?  It comes mighty near perfection.”

“I never give away the tricks of my trade, David!  And let me tell you, you are mighty like a sandwich yourself—­light and shade in layers; but I reckon you are right about the friend part in mothers.  Then, too, I think an adopted mother has this to her credit—­she doesn’t dare presume.”

“No, often she bullies.  She thinks she paid for the right.  After all, the best any of us can do for a child is to set it free; point out the channels and keep the lights burning!”

“David, you are wonderful.  You should have had children.”  The tears were in Doris’s eyes.

“Oh!  I don’t know—­I’d have to have too many other things tacked on.  All children are mine now, in a sense.”

David pushed the tray away and leaned luxuriously back in his chair.

“Now,” he said, with his peculiar smile that few rarely saw, “let’s have it!  The skirmish is over.”

Then Doris told him—­feeling her way as she poured her confession into the ears of one who trusted her so fully and who asked so little.  She saw his startled glance when she, beginning with Meredith’s death, struck the high note of the real matter.  Martin was not resenting her past reticence, but he was taken off his guard, and that rarely happened to him.

Once, having controlled his emotions, he was placid enough.  He noted the outstretched hands in Doris’s lap and estimated her weariness and her need of him.  After all, those were the big things of the moment.  In Martin’s thought any act of Doris’s could easily be explained and righted.  He did not interrupt her, he even saw the humour of her account of the scene with Thornton, years before, when she presented both children to his horrified eyes.  Martin shook with laughter, and that trivial act did more to strengthen Doris than anything he could have done.  It relieved the tension.

“How did you manage to create the impression, among us all, that these children are twins?” Martin, seeing that Doris had finished with the vital matter, turned to details.  “I cannot recall that you ever said so—­and there seems to be no reason why they should be twins.”