Marvel, standing at the window in the sunshine, a little excited by her own eloquence and wondering at it still, had no conception of the havoc she had worked. Indeed, she was innocent of the knowledge that any one, least of all herself, had the power to move her mother greatly. She assumed, after the careless fashion of {209} youth, that her elders were indifferent and unemotional. Suddenly, she heard an unfamiliar and terrifying sound. Her mother was sobbing with harsh, rending sobs, tearless and terrible. Marvel turned in quick alarm and stood confused before this anguish of her own inflicting. Clarissa's very soul seemed sobbing, and her daughter did not know how to bear the sound. The girl wrung her hands helplessly. Something struck her heart and quivered down her nerves. Then, as she watched this woman, so like, yet so unlike herself, all at once--she understood! She was suffering with every painful breath her mother drew. In the heart of her heart she felt them. They two were bound together there. It was even as Evelyn had told her,--Evelyn, the beloved, whose truth had never failed her yet! The primal tie {210} that draws God to his worlds still holds the woman and her child. It was a wonder and a miracle unspeakable--but it was true. Throbbing and palpable, she felt the tie. It was as if her eyelids were anointed, and all the deep and secret things of life lay clear. Ah, she had not known the half before! How shallow and complacent she must have seemed! She dropped on her knees beside the lounge. No eloquence now! She stammered commonplace words eagerly, pitifully. "Mother dear! Mother, I didn't mean to hurt you so! I did n't know. _I did n't know!_ Don't cry! O mother dear, _don't cry!_" Clarissa lifted a drawn, woeful face, and looked straight into her daughter's eyes. I cannot tell you what she saw there of wonder and newborn {211} tenderness. But she drank of that look thirstily, as might one who had found springs of living water after a desert drought. Her own child's hand had struck her down. Yet, in her overthrow, she read in Marvel's face the sign all mothers seek. Ungentle and unmerciful the girl had been, yet gentler and more merciful than she! And by that token she knew her life not wasted utterly. For she had given to this world--this piteous world for which she had labored clumsily and ineffectually in alien ways--the best thing that the woman has to give. Offspring a little better than herself she gave to it. This child of hers, just now so hard, yet now become so pitiful, was her own child and more. Of her flesh and of her spirit had been wrought a finer thing than she. ------------------------------ _The Riverside Press_ CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A ------------------------------ [Advertisements] CHRISTOPHER By Richard Pryce "A refreshing book for the reader who knows and loves human nature, who delights in the quiet realities of life."--_Chicago Record-Herald._