The girl turned obediently, her face poignantly, sweetly pink, very sad. Her eyes bright with tears like violets after a summer rain. The flush was ominous. Mrs. Adams had never seen Helen this color before, never in her life. She bent and laid a palm on the girl’s brow--warm, but moist; certainly not feverish. She stood regarding her daughter thoughtfully. Then she sat down on the side of the bed, took one of Helen’s hands in her own harsher, stronger hand, where it lay like a plucked lily, wilted, icy cold. She stroked it gently. Her face softened, her eyes brooded, as if through a mist she beheld a memory of herself long ago, which suddenly freshened and brightened into the figure of the girl she had been. Mothers are omniscient. They have little paths back and forth through their years by which the ghosts of them can always find you, wherever you are. Not another word was spoken for a long time between these two; the younger, overcome by the future, holding the unsolved, longed-for mystery of love; the other, overcome by the past, which held for her the dreadful reality of love. Neither had or could escape. They accomplished a wordless sympathy on this basis. Mrs. Adams’ reflections were strangely mixed, what with that sundown feeling she had of her own youth and the anxieties of a mother growing stronger every moment. She would like to know, for example, if Helen had seen George Cutter. Had she gone by the bank for the pass book? But even when she caught sight of this book lying on the dresser, with the ends of many checks sticking out of it, she did not put the question. Love is a wound too painful to be dressed with the tenderest words when it is first made, much less scraped with a question. She was, over and above her emotions as a woman and a mother, fairly well satisfied with the situation. She inferred that George and Helen had had some sort of passage at arms. And she did not suppose that any man in or out of his senses could actually resist for long a girl of Helen’s soft charm. Mothers have their pride, you understand. This one was shrewd, eminently practical. You must be, to deal with youth at this stage. The room was flooded with the golden effulgence of a summer twilight when at last she arose, moved gently toward the door, picking up the bank book as she passed the dresser and thrusting it into her pocket. “Helen,” she said from the doorway, “it is the heat. This has been a very warm day. You will be better presently.” “Yes, mother, I think it was the heat; and I do feel better,” the girl answered faintly. “There is ice tea and chicken salad for supper,” Mrs. Adams suggested. “I don’t think I care for anything.” “Well, later then. I’ll leave the tea and your salad on the ice,” the mother said, going out and closing the door. CHAPTER IV