“No; of course not. But you mustn't both be against me, and Chrissy, too. She is so, unconsciously; she does not know the pull there is on me, through knowing things she doesn't dream of, and that I can never forget.” “No,” said Moya. “I am sure she is perfectly unconscious. We exchanged biographies at school, and there was nothing at all like this in hers. Why was she never told?” “She has always been too strained, too excitable. Every least incident is an emotion with her. When she laughs, her laugh is like a cry. Haven't you noticed that? Startle her, and her eyes are the very eyes of fear. Mother was wise, I think, not to pour those old sorrows into her little fragile cup.” “So she emptied them all into yours!” “That was my right, of the elder and stronger. I wouldn't have missed the knowledge of our beginnings for the world. What a prosperous fool and ass I might have made of myself!” “Morbid again,” said Moya. “You belong to your own day and generation. You might as well wear country shoes and clothes because your father wore them.” “Still, if we have such a thing in this country as class, then you and I do not belong to the same class except by virtue of Uncle Jacob's money. Confess you are glad I am a Bevier and a Broderick and a Van Elten, as well as a Bogardus.” “I shall confess nothing of the kind. Now you do talk like a _nouveau_ Paul, dear,” said Moya, with her caressing eyes on his--they had paused under the lamp at the top of the steps--“I think your father must have been a very good man.” “All our fathers were,” Paul averred, smiling at her earnestness. “Yes, but yours in particular; because _you_ are an angel; and your mother is quite human, is she not?--almost as human as I am? That carriage of the head,--if that does not mean the world!”-- “She has needed all her pride.” “I don't object to pride, myself,” said the girl, “but you dwell so upon her humiliations. I see no such record in her face.” “She has had much to hide, you must remember.” “Well, she can hide things; but one's self must escape sometimes. What has become of little Emily Van Elten who ran away with her father's hired man? What has become of the freighter's wife?” “She is all mother now. She brought us back to the world, and for our sakes she has learned to take her place in it. Herself she has buried.” “Yes; but which is--was herself?” “And you cannot see her story in her face?” “Not that story.” “Not the crushing reserve, the long suspense, the silence of a sorrow that even her children could not share?” “I know her silence. Your mother is a most reticent woman. But is she now the woman of that story?” “I don't understand you quite,” said Paul. “How much are we ourselves after we have passed through fires of grief, and been recast under the pressure of circumstances! She was that woman once.”