"I don't know that I can make you understand. It is such a simple, elemental thing. You either know it, or you don't. You may mother chickens in a brooder, but you must mother children in your arms. After you left, mother, for four mortal years I was the most miserable scrap on earth. I was fed and clothed and taught and cared for. I was petted, too, but it was never _right_. All the while I felt {202} myself alone. Aunt Josephine did n't count; even father did n't, then. I could not sleep for loneliness, and I used to wake far in the night, my eyes all wet with tears. I had been crying in my sleep. The universe felt desolate and vacant. Just one little girl alone in it! There was such a weight at my heart! I would cry and cry. It was an awful, constant hunger for the mother that I did n't have. So I know how it is with all children. Their hearts must be fed!" Clarissa listened, astounded. The girl stood now at the open window, breathing in the soft spring air in long-drawn, tremulous breaths. The excitement of speech was upon her. Her eyes were liquid, wonderful. And never, in all her life, had she looked so like the woman who watched her breathlessly. {203} "These are such big things," she went on, "I hardly know how to talk about them. But I have thought a great deal. I know the world must be made better, and every one must do his share. But, mother, you can't save the world in platoons. Even Christ had but twelve disciples. I'm not denying that thousands of women must work outside the home; I'm not denying that hundreds may be specially called to do work in and for the world. But the mothers are not called. They must not go, unless want drives. They have the homes to make--the part of the homes that is atmosphere. Oh, don't you know what I mean? The women who understand can make a home in a boarding-house or in foreign lodgings; in a camp on the desert or in an eyrie in the mountains. It's the feel of it! Don't you understand it at {204} all,--the warm, comforted, easeful feeling that encompasses you when you come in the door, or raise the tent-flap? Home is the thing that nourishes, that cherishes, that puts its arms about you and says, Rest here! "I know--for father and Evelyn made a home for me. Father is like me. He is lost, shipwrecked, ruined, if his heart is n't sheltered. I don't know what I think about divorces and re-marriages. It is all so perplexing. I do not know at all. But I know you broke up a home, and Evelyn made one. Whatever people do, if they can do that for a child as father and Evelyn did it for me, I should n't wonder if they are justified before gods and men!" The rapid sentences fell like hammer-strokes upon Clarissa's naked heart. She felt that she ought to be {205} defending her beliefs, but she could not take her eyes from Marvel's glowing face, and the girl went swiftly on:--