“Ah, but Chris is different! You don’t know him.” The mother locked her hands about the chair-arms. She sat looking down at the bare brick floor of the room, and at Anne’s two feet, slim and imperious, planted just before her in an attitude of challenge, of resistance. She did not dare to raise her eyes higher. “_I don’t know him!_” she repeated to herself. “Mother, answer me--you’ve got to answer me!” The girl’s low-pitched voice had grown shrill; her swaying tall white presence seemed to disengage some fiery fluid. Kate Clephane suddenly recalled the baby Anne’s lightning-flashes of rage, and understood what reserves of violence still underlay her daughter’s calm exterior. “How can I answer? I know what you’re suffering--but I can’t pretend to think that what you propose would make any difference.” “You don’t think it was the money?” Kate Clephane drew a deep breath, and clasped the chair-arms tighter. “No.” “What _was_ it, then?” Anne had once more sunk on her knees beside her mother. “I can’t bear not to know. I can’t bear it an hour longer,” she gasped out. “It’s hard, dear ... I know how hard....” Kate put her arms about the shuddering body. “What shall I do, mother? I’ve written, and he doesn’t answer. I’ve written three times. And yet I know--” “You know?” “He _did_ love me, mother.” “Yes, dear.” “And there wasn’t any one else; I know that too.” “Yes.” “No one else that he cared about ... or who had any claim.... I asked him that before I promised to marry him.” “Then, dear, there’s nothing more to say--or to do. You can only conclude that he gave you back your freedom because he wanted his.” “But it was all so quick! How can anybody love one day, and not the next?” Kate winced. “It does happen so--sometimes.” “I don’t believe it--not of him and me! And there _was_ the money; I know that. Mother, let me try; let me tell him that you’ve agreed to take it all back; that I shall have only the allowance you choose to make me.” Mrs. Clephane again sat silent, with lowered head. She had not foreseen this torture. “Don’t you think, dear, as you’ve written three times and had no answer, that you’d better wait? Better try to forget?” The girl shook herself free and stood up with a tragic laugh. “You don’t know me either, mother!” That word was crueller than the other; the mother shrank from it as if she had received a blow. “I do know that, in such cases, there’s never any remedy but one. If your courage fails you, there’s your pride.” “My pride? What’s pride, if one cares? I’d do anything to get him back. I only want you to do what I ask!” Kate Clephane rose to her feet also. Her own pride seemed suddenly to start up from its long lethargy, and she looked almost defiantly at her defiant daughter. “I can’t do what you ask.” “You won’t?” “I can’t.”