“Darling, don’t you remember your early days together? The little things--little jokes, and allusions, and happinesses shared together? Does one ever forget?” “_No._” Mary sobbed. “But I can’t go back to him.” I think that here, if my grandmother gave her a chance, she probably did make one--or part of one--of the speeches that she long afterwards quoted to me. She was intensely unhappy. Robert did not understand her, and she could not live in an unsympathetic atmosphere. She should go mad. All that she had ever asked of life was peace, beautiful surroundings, and the ideal companion.... If she went back to Robert now, after having found courage to make the break, it would be a repetition of the misery that had broken her heart during the past three years. (The hearts of my mother and grandmother both suffered innumerable breakages throughout their lives, neither of them ever seeming aware of the physiological absurdity of the expression.) “It’s braver to stay away than to go back and try and patch up something that can never be anything but a failure,” quavered Mary, with a momentary flash of insight. But of course grandmother couldn’t leave it at that. She had the justification of her own existence to think of, for one thing. I am quite sure that a fortuitous street-musician, rendering “Santa Lucia” or “Silver Threads Amongst the Gold” in the distance, would have broken down Mary’s frail barrier of honest thought, and have materially assisted my grandmother to her victory. Accessories were so absolutely essentials, to them both. But so far as I know, grandmother had to win on points, as it were, and received no extraneous help in the shape of sentimental appeals from without. She made her supreme effort. “For the boy’s sake, Mary ... your little, little boy. Is he to be motherless?” “Wouldn’t Robert let me have him?” “No, my dear. How could he? I myself--the mother that bore you, Mary--I couldn’t think it right that a woman who had deliberately deserted her husband and home should have the care of a little, innocent child.” “Oh, my baby!” She sobbed and cried, but she had not yet capitulated. Grandmother, however, had gauged pretty accurately the force of the baby-_motif_. “Before I came away, on my long, lonely journey,” she said slowly, “I went up to the nursery, to say good-bye to Bobbie. He had on his blue overall--the one you embroidered for him last summer, Mary--was it only last summer?--and he was playing with his engine, on the nursery floor, his dear, round face was so solemn....” “Oh, don’t--don’t----” But grandmother, the tears streaming from her eyes, relentlessly continued: “Darling, his big blue eyes looked up at me, and his little voice asked: ‘_Where’s Mummie?_’” Did grandmother’s--even grandmother’s--conscience misgive her, at the quotation? That it was verbally correct, I have no doubt--but what of the intonation?