It was too late, she said to herself again, and felt through her calm the upstriking pang which the words inevitably evoke. It was true, as Dick said, that you could wait too long, so that, when the time came, and the chance offered, you were not able to take it. And the reason you were not able was because you had nothing left with which to meet it. The strength which you needed for new conditions had been squandered long ago, frittered away, day by day, in striving and rebellion. The children thought it too late, too.... Her heart contracted as she remembered that, and she drew in her breath sharply. They had ceased to look for her long since,--if it was true what Jessie had told Dolly. It seemed a betrayal beyond pardon that they should not have gone on hoping as long as they could; at all events until she, who had lived on that hope, had finally resigned it. But she had never hinted at such a thing, not even in the latest of her letters. Perhaps they had laughed at the letters, she thought, shrinking; had mocked, even if ever so kindly, at the old mother who would not own herself defeated.... At least they had not mocked her when they wrote, nor had they ever implied that they had ceased to expect her. They had kept it up, just as she had kept it up, and with all the old happy anticipation. And for long enough now it had been just pretence ... that is, if you could believe Jessie. She felt suddenly that she hated letters and the things that they could do.... Jessie’s letters, which had brought about this present trouble ... the letters from the children, without which she might possibly have settled down long since.... She came at last to the thought of Ellen, and forced herself to meet it. It was Ellen who had hurt her most,--Ellen, who had been nearest to her, and had always understood her. Not only had she ceased to believe that she would come, but, with the plan for her own visit growing in her mind, she must also have ceased to hope for it. She had told a complete stranger that she was breaking her heart, longingly looking back to the home she had left so gladly. She had not told her mother that she was breaking her heart.... Mattie felt the desolation of one who, dedicated to some cause, finds that the comrade with whom he has travelled has secretly turned back. She remembered Ellen’s packet now, and, getting up to look for it, returned with it resolutely to the table. She opened it slowly, fumbling with paper and string, and without any interest in what she was doing. Her mind, persistently turned inward upon its sorrow, refused to focus for more than a second upon any external object. All that she could think of at the moment was the hard fact of Ellen’s backsliding, and the breaking of the bond which had so long existed between them.