The children laughed in sheer excitement and clapped their hands. Becky tried to imitate the step, fell over and rolled, convulsed with laughter, on the floor. The door opened and Mrs. Wilde stood on the threshold. She was a tall thin woman, all in black, with a heavy humorless mouth, pallid skin, flat pouches under her eyes. “Miriam! Becky!” she cried. “Come here instantly!” Becky got up. The two children, crestfallen, between sulkiness and a measure of fear, moved slowly toward the door. The mother stood aside, ushered them out, then confronted the younger woman. There was a tired sort of anger in her eyes. The almost impenetrable egotism of her widowhood had been touched and stirred by the merry little scene. “You hold your promises lightly,” she said. Sue bit her lip, threw out her hands. “It isn't that--” “Then what is it?” Mrs. Wilde moved into the room and closed the door. “I don't quite see what we are to do, Sue. I can't have this sort of temptation put before them right here, in their home. You know what I have taught them and what I expect of them. You know' I wish to be kind to you, but this isn't fair. He--he...” She carried a handkerchief, heavily bordered with black. This she pressed to her eyes. A hot temper blazed in Sue. She struggled with it. Sharp words rushed to her tongue. She drove them back. It occurred to her that she must be considerate; the woman's life had been torn from its roots, what mind she had was of course overwhelmed. Sue stood there, her hands clenched at her sides, groping desperately for some point of mental contact with the woman who had married her father--forgetting that there had never been a print of mental contact. Suddenly she recalled a few hot phrases of the Worm's, spoken in regard to this very matter of her attempt to confine her life within this gloomy home--“It's Puritan against Cavalier--both right, both wrong! It's the Greeks against the Greatest of Jews--both right, both wrong! Beauty against duty, the instinct to express against the instinct to serve--both right, both wrong!”... Was Henry Bates right? Was the gulf between her natural self and this home unbridgeable? Motionless, tense, she tried, all in an instant, to think this through--and failed. A wave of emotion overwhelmed her, an uprushing of egotism as blind as the egotism of the woman in black who stood stiffly against the closed door. It was a clash--not of wills, for Sue's will was to serve--but of natures. CHAPTER XXXIV--ONE DOES FORGET ABOUT HAPPINESS