Claire had been watching her with great keenness. She had been reading her mood. By the light of the past--the retrospective light flung from weary years lived out at this mother's side, did this daughter now swiftly see and as swiftly understand. "Claire," said Mrs. Diggs, spurred by an impulse of heroic interference no less than an alarmed one, "let me speak a few words; let me"-- "No," interrupted Claire. Her simple veto seemed to cut the air of the room. She turned and met Mrs. Diggs's gaze for a moment, while dropping her hand. "I thank you, Kate; but please leave all to me." Then she faced her mother's irate glare. She was still decidedly pale, but in her clear voice there was no hint of tremor. "Very well," she said, "suppose you _do_ go in and find my friends. Suppose you _do_ tell them everything. I do not merely invite you to go; I challenge you to go. I will even show you the way myself." "Claire!" faltered Mrs. Diggs, below her breath. Claire walked toward the curtained doorway and slightly parted its draperies. She was looking at her mother across one shoulder. "Will you come?" she asked. "I am quite ready." The enraged look began to die from Mrs. Twining's face. She receded a little. "I can go myself when I choose," she muttered. "I can find the way myself, when I'm ready. I ain't ready yet." Claire let the draperies fall. She resumed her former position. "You will never be ready," she said, with a melancholy scorn, "and you know it as well as I. You thought to come here and make me cringe with terror before you, while you threatened and stormed. But you had no intention of bringing matters to any crisis. You think me very prosperous, very powerful, and very rich. You are secretly glad that I am. You would not on any account harm me as a person of importance; but you wanted to keep me, as one, in a state of rule, a state of subjection. By that means you could climb up to a place something like my own ... so you have argued. You would share what I have secured. You were always a very ambitious woman. Your sickness (which Heaven knows I am sorry enough to hear about) hasn't changed you a particle. I thought at first that it might have turned or clouded your brain--have made you reckless of consequences. But it has done nothing of the sort. You are precisely the same as ever." Here Claire paused. Her mother had sunk into a chair. In her working lips and the uneasy roll of her eyes a great, abrupt dismay was evident.