We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I, "who had missed her footing". It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent; but we "brought her through". While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and two in the morning: "You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.--Two o'clock, three. The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four--I heard the rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from the ferries. "You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over and over again I heard it. Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot street clamor. Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil--but I could not see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in the forest for old André, could I see her again in her youth and beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss. But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search, east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at Lamoral,--unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her daughter was there awaiting him,--to that place which I, also unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love for me who was her daughter!--and he knew this! Knew I was her daughter. How had he dared? And he her husband--my mother's husband! The thought was staggering.