As she listened Merry's mind was working fast. What were the relations existing between them? She admired her mother tremendously, and was proud of the attention her beauty excited wherever they went. She respected her, for no wife or mother ever carried herself in these positions with greater regard for the proprieties. Did she love her? Of course! what a question to come to a girl's mind! Did she? The question repeated itself insistently. Merry wondered. If this were disloyalty, then the thought itself formed the offense; to analyze it was imperative before putting it aside. The girl knew that she was face to face with the crisis of her life, that the question now in mind had really been the cause of that unrest she had failed to understand. "Is this something which you ask me to do?" Merry inquired at length. "No, my dear; that would be exceeding a mother's rights." "But you wish it?" "Yes; that is a different matter." "I wonder if it is," the girl said soberly. "It is a very different matter," Marian insisted. "I am thinking only of you, dear child. Unless you felt convinced, as I do, that your marriage would mean your happiness, I should be the last one to wish it." "Why don't you let me wait, as other girls do, until I find the man I love?" "Because you're not like other girls, Merry--" "I've always been a disappointment to you, haven't I, Momsie?" she asked suddenly. "Not that, dear," Marian disclaimed. "Of course it has worried me that you would never be intimate with young people your own age. I have never understood it--" "That is because I never had any girlhood, Momsie," Merry explained seriously. "I grew up too soon. When I was little I couldn't play like other children because my governess was always teaching me manners; so I had nothing to do but think." "What are you talking about, child!" Mrs. Thatcher protested. "You are a perfect tomboy, even to-day!" "I've had to make up for lost time, Momsie. You never saw me play when I was little; that came after I became old enough to have my own way. Then I learned games, but not as a child learns them; they were serious problems, to be thought out because I had formed the habit of thinking. While I was away at school I felt older than the other girls there, and I wasn't interested in what interested them; that gave me a chance to think some more. Then I came home, and you gave me that wonderful coming-out party! It was after that I disappointed you most, wasn't it, Momsie? I couldn't live the life the other débutantes did--talking silly nonsense until early morning with men who hadn't any sense at all, rushing to _thés dansants_ smoking cigarettes, and all that sort of thing." "I never knew that you did smoke cigarettes," Marian said severely.