It brought the girl nearer, made her less aloof, to hear that familiar old denial. “Some day before long,” the mother thought, “she’ll tell me who he is.” VI. Kate Clephane lay awake all night thinking of the man who had been too shy to come into the box. Her sense of security, of permanence, was gone. She understood now that it had been based on the idea that her life would henceforth go on just as it had for the two months since her return; that she and Anne would always remain side by side. The idea was absurd, of course; if she followed it up, her mind recoiled from it. To keep Anne for the rest of her life unchanged, and undesirous of change--the aspiration was inconceivable. She wanted for her daughter the common human round, no more, but certainly no less. Only she did not want her to marry yet--not till they two had grown to know each other better, till Kate had had time to establish herself in her new life. So she put it to herself; but she knew that what she felt was just an abject fear of change, more change--of being uprooted again, cast once more upon her own resources. No! She could not picture herself living alone in a little house in New York, dependent on Drovers and Tresseltons, and on the good Fred Landers, for her moral sustenance. To be with Anne, to play the part of Anne’s mother--the one part, she now saw, that fate had meant her for--that was what she wanted with all her starved and world-worn soul. To be the background, the atmosphere, of her daughter’s life; to depend on Anne, to feel that Anne depended on her; it was the one perfect companionship she had ever known, the only close tie unmarred by dissimulation and distrust. The mere restfulness of it had made her contracted soul expand as if it were sinking into a deep warm bath. Now the sense of restfulness was gone. From the moment when she had seen Anne’s lids drop on that secret vision, the mother had known that her days of quietude were over. Anne’s choice might be perfect; she, Kate Clephane, might live out the rest of her days in peace between Anne and Anne’s husband. But the mere possibility of a husband made everything incalculable again. The morning brought better counsel. There was Anne herself, in her riding-habit, aglow from an early canter, and bringing in her mother’s breakfast, without a trace of mystery in her clear eyes. There was the day’s pleasant routine, easy and insidious, the planning and adjusting of engagements, notes to be answered, invitations to be sent out; the habitual took Mrs. Clephane into its soothing hold. “After all,” she reflected, “young men don’t run away nowadays from falling in love.” Probably the whole thing had been some cryptic chaff of the youth with the football face; Nollie, indirectly, might enlighten her.