“I don’t know, exactly. But he stirs up some childish confusion in me.... I think I have all my life been trying to live up to my father’s expectations—not of me, for I don’t think he expects anything of me—but of womankind ... if that seems to you to make sense. It’s as if I were trying to prove to him that women could be—I don’t know what, but perhaps ... different from my mother. For instance, I want to be a certain kind of wife to you, Felix—not possessive, not interfering, and all that. I go along thinking I am that kind of wife—and then I see him looking at me and smiling, and I have the feeling that it isn’t true ... that I’m just Woman all over again, the only kind of woman he knows, the kind he hates. Yes, I feel that I am just that kind—and I wonder if there is any other kind—and I get desperate and want to prove there is. I couldn’t have stood it there much longer. I should have done some crazy thing!... I don’t suppose you can understand—you aren’t a girl!” 3 He couldn’t understand; though it was true that as the train carried them nearer and nearer to his own parents, he became more and more uncomfortable.... The situation was different enough; Rose-Ann had felt that their prosperous air secured them against family criticism; Felix felt that same appearance as a reproach to his conscience.... “I’ve felt for years,” he said, “that I was an ungrateful child. I hate to go there to exhibit my prosperity to them. Of course, it isn’t so tremendous a prosperity—but it’s enough to make me feel ashamed. You know how hard it is for me to write to my mother; and I hardly ever can bring myself to write except when I can send her a little money—as if, yes, as if in penance for my desertion of her!” “Would you like to have her live with us?” “No—I wouldn’t. I owe her too much, I couldn’t bear to be always reminded of the debt. It’s a debt that’s too huge—I never can pay it, and I try to forget it.” “The thought that she loves you more than you love her—is that what makes you feel ungrateful?” “I suppose so. I do love her—” “Of course you do, Felix!” “More than I want to, perhaps! I can’t forget her, and I resent that. I want to get away from her.... She petted and spoiled me when I was a child. She wanted to keep me a child always. She kept me in skirts, she kept me wearing long curls—she made a baby of me. My whole life is in a sense trying to get away from that.... You’ll see—she’ll wait on me, ‘hand and foot,’ as they say—try to make me her baby again. She’ll anticipate my wishes, and jump up from the table to get something for me, and follow me about with her eyes—and I’ll get to feeling helpless, and then furious—and then I’ll say something cross to her, and be ashamed of myself.... Oh, well!” “So you have queer feelings about your parents, too!”