"We were in Europe. I hadn't any money. I was beaten down and stunned. When I tried to write to father and mother, I couldn't. They would have said that I was hysterical, and for God's sake to consider the family name!... I have been a woman slow to develop mentally. What poise I've got, what reading, what knowledge, what everything, has come to me since that time. Then I didn't know how to hold my head up and march out. Then I only wanted to die.... We came home, and it was to find father with a desperate illness. I couldn't tell mother then. I doubt if I could ever have told her. I doubt if it would have done any good if I had.... We went to live in a house up on the Sound. Julian said his fortune was getting low, and that it would be cheaper there. But he himself came into town and stayed when he wished. He spent a great deal of money. I do not know what he did with it. He threw away all that he had.... I knew by now that Betty was coming. She was born before I was nineteen. And Charley was born a year afterward--born blind, and I knew why. I loved my children. But my marriage remained what it had always been. When Charley was nearly a year old, I couldn't stand it any longer. If I could stand it for myself, I saw that I couldn't stand it for them. I couldn't let them grow up having that kind of a mother, the kind that would stand it.... Julian went away. Every two or three months he took all the money he could lay his hands on and disappeared. I knew that he had dived into all that goes on here, in some places, in this city. He would be gone sometimes two weeks, sometimes longer.... Well, this time I took Betty and Charley and came home, came here--and they tried to persuade me to go back. The Bishop was here, visiting his nephew, and he came and tried to persuade me to go back. But I wouldn't ... and there was no need. Within the week Julian was killed in a fray in a house a mile, I suppose, from where we sit. That was two years ago." She rose and moved about the firelit room. "Yes, I've got the two children, and life's healing over. I don't call myself unhappy now. At times I'm quite gay--and you don't know how eerie it feels! But happy or not, Hagar, I'll never forget--I'll never forget--I'll never forget! They talk about the end of the century, and about our seeing the beginning of better things. They say the twentieth century will be an age of clearer Thinking and greater Courage, and they talk about the coming great Movements.--There's one Movement that I want to see, and that's the Movement to tell the young girl. If I were the world I wouldn't have my dishonoured life as it gets it now.... And now let's talk about something else." Hagar crossed to her, took her in her arms, and kissed her lips and forehead. "I love you, Rachel. Come, let's look at the rain, how it streams! Listen! Isn't that thunder?" They stood at the window and looked out upon the slanting lines and the glistening asphalt. The doorbell rang.