Her mother had a book in her lap. She noticed that if she left off sewing Mamma would take up the book and read, and when she began again she would put it down. Her thoughts went from Mamma to Mark, from Mark to Mamma. She used to be pleased when she saw you sewing. "Nothing will ever please her now. She'll never be happy again.... I ought to have died instead of Mark.... That's Anthony Trollope she's reading." The long sheet kept slipping. It dragged on her arm. Her arms felt swollen, and heavy like bars of lead. She let them drop to her knees.... Little Mamma. She picked up the sheet again. "Why are you sewing, Mary?" "I must do _something_." "Why don't you take a book and read?" "I can't read." "Well--why don't you go out for a walk?" "Too tired." "You'd better go and lie down in your room." She hated her room. Everything in it reminded her of the day after Mark died. The rows of new books reminded her; and Mark's books in the narrow bookcase. They were hers. She would never be asked to give them back again. Yesterday she had taken out the Aeschylus and looked at it, and she had forgotten that Mark was dead and had felt glad because it was hers. To-day she had been afraid to see its shabby drab back lest it should remind her of that, too. Her mother sighed and put her book away. She sat with her hands before her, waiting. Her face had its old look of reproach and disapproval, the drawn, irritated look you saw when you came between her and Mark. As if your grief for Mark came between her and her grief, as if, deep down inside her, she hated your grief as she had hated your love for him, without knowing that she hated it. Suddenly she turned on you her blurred, wounded eyes. "Mary, when you look at me like that I feel as if you knew everything I'm thinking." "I don't. I shall never know." Supposing all the time she knew what you were thinking? Supposing Mark knew? Supposing the dead knew? She was glad of the aching of her heart that dragged her thought down and numbed it. The January twilight crept between them. She put down her sewing. At the stroke of the clock her mother stirred in her chair. "What day of the month is it?" she said. "The twenty-fifth." "Then--yesterday was your birthday.... Poor Mary. I forgot.... I sit here, thinking. My own thoughts. They make me forget.... Come here." She went to her, drawn by a passion stronger than her passion for Mark, her hard, proud passion for Mark. Her mother put up her face. She stooped down and kissed her passionately, on her mouth, her wet cheeks, her dove's eyes, her dove's eyelids. She crouched on the floor beside her, leaning her head against her lap. Mamma's hand held it there. "Are you twenty-nine or thirty?" "Thirty." "You don't look it. You've always been such a little thing.... You remember the silly question you used to ask me? 'Mamma--would you love me better if I was two?'" She remembered. Long ago. When she came teasing for kisses. The silly question.