"It isn't enough." "Minky--why are you such a brute to little Mamma?" "Because I can't help it ... It's all very well for you--" Mark turned in the path and looked at her; his tight, firm face tighter and firmer. She thought: "He doesn't know. He's like Mamma. He won't see what he doesn't want to see. It would be kinder not to tell him. But I can't be kind. He's joined with Mamma against me. They're two to one. Mamma must have said something to make him hate me." ...Perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps he had only seen her disapproving, reproachful face ... "If he says another word--if he looks like that again, I shall tell him." "It's different for you," she said. "Ever since I began to grow up I felt there was something about Mamma that would kill me if I let it. I've had to fight for every single thing I've ever wanted. It's awful fighting her, when she's so sweet and gentle. But it's either that or go under." "Minky--you talk as if she hated you." "She does hate me." "You lie." He said it gently, without rancour. "No. I found that out years ago. She doesn't _know_ she hates me. She never knows that awful sort of thing. And of course she loved me when I was little. She'd love me now if I stayed little, so that she could do what she liked with me; if I'd sit in a corner and think as she thinks, and feel as she feels and do what she does." "If you did you'd be a much nicer Minx." "Yes. Except that I _should_ be lying then, the whole time. Hiding my real self and crushing it. It's your _real_ self she hates--the thing she can't see and touch and get at--the thing that makes you different. Even when I was little she hated it and tried to crush it. I remember things--" "You don't love her. You wouldn't talk like that about her if you loved her." "It's _because_ I love her. Her self. _Her_ real self. When she's working in the garden, planting flowers with her blessed little hands, doing what she likes, and when she's reading the Bible and thinking about God and Jesus, and when she's with _you_, Mark, happy. That's her real self. I adore it. Selves are sacred. You ought to adore them. Anybody's self. Catty's.... I used to wonder what the sin against the Holy Ghost was. They told you nobody knew what it was. _I_ know. It's that. Not adoring the self in people. Hating it. Trying to crush it." "I see. Mamma's committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, has she?" "Yes." He laughed. "You mustn't go about saying those things. People will think you mad." "Let them. I don't care--I don't care if _you_ think I'm mad. I only think it's beastly of you to say so." "You're not madder than I am. We're all mad. Mad as hatters. You and me and Dank and Roddy and Uncle Victor. Poor Charlotte's the sanest of the lot, and she's the only one that's got shut up." "Why do you say she's the sanest?" "Because she knew what she wanted."