She was separated from them all. She seemed to know that she was holding her mother thus for the last time.... Then as her hands tightened, in very protest, about the slumbering body, she was conscious of the presence, behind her, just then where she could not see, of the taunting, laughing figure. She could catch the eyes, the scornful lips, the thin, defiant attitude. “I’ll take him back! I’ll take him back!” the laughing figure cried. But Katherine had her bravery. She summoned it all. “I’ll beat you!” she answered, her arms tight around her mother. “I’ve made my choice. He’s mine now whatever you try!” CHAPTER II THE MIRROR Philip had never had any conceit of himself—that is, he could not remember the time when he had been satisfied with what he had done, or pleased with the figure that he presented. The selfish actions in his life had always arisen from unselfish motives, because he had been afraid of hurting or vexing other people, because he thought other people finer than himself. Even when, as in the case of Seymour, he burst out in indignation at something that he felt to be pretentious and false, he, afterwards, on thinking it over, wondered whether the man hadn’t after all been right ‘from his point of view.’ It was this ability to see the other person’s point of view that had been, and would always be, the curse of his life. Such men as Philip are not among the fine creatures of the world. Very rightly they are despised for their weakness, their lack of resistance, their inability to stand up for themselves. It is possible, nevertheless, that in heaven they will find that they, too, have their fine side. And this possibility of an ultimate divine comprehension irritates, very naturally, their fellow human beings who resent any defence of weakness. Philip himself would have been the first to resent it. He never consoled himself with thought of heaven, but took, now and then, a half-humorous, half-despairing glance at himself, swore, as he had in those long-ago days sworn about his mother, ‘how this shall never happen again’, and then once more was defeated by his imagination.