"I know"--a pensive look came into her face--"but we were very poor, and after the three came so quickly, and the little one that I lost, Oliver felt that we could not afford to have any others. I've so often thought that I was never really happy except when I had a baby in my arms." "It's a devilish trick of Nature's that she makes them stop coming at the very time that you want them most. Forty-five is not much more than half a lifetime, Jinny." "And when one has lived in their children as I have done, of course, one feels a little bit lost without them. Then, if Oliver were not obliged to be away so much----" Her voice broke, and Susan, leaning forward impulsively, put her arms about her. "Jinny, darling, I never saw you depressed before." "I was never like this until to-day. It must be the weather--or my age. I suppose I shall get over it." "Of course you will get over it--but you mustn't let it grow on you. You mustn't be too much alone." "How can I help it? Oliver will be away almost all winter, and when he is at home, he is so absorbed in his work that he sometimes doesn't speak for days. Of course, it isn't his fault," she added hastily; "it is the only way he can write." "And you're alone now for the first time for twenty-five years. That's why you feel it so keenly." The look of unselfish goodness which made Virginia's face almost beautiful at times passed like an edge of light across her eyes and mouth. "Don't worry about me, Susan. I'll get used to it." "You will, dear, but it isn't right. I wish Harry could have stayed in Dinwiddie. He would have been such a comfort to you." "But I wouldn't have had him do it! The boy is so brilliant. He has a future before him. Already he has had several articles accepted by the magazines"--her face shone--"and I hope that he will some day be as successful as Oliver has been without going through the long struggle." "Can't you go to England to see him in the summer?" "That's what I want to do." It was touching to see how her animation and interest revived when she began talking of Harry. "And when Oliver's play is put on in February, he has promised to take me to New York for the first night." "I am glad of that. But, meanwhile, you mustn't sit at home and think too much, Jinny. It isn't good for you. Can't you find an interest? If you would only take up reading again. You used to be fond of it." "I know, but one gets out of the habit. I gave it up after the children came, when there was so much that was really important for me to do, and now, to save my life, I can't get interested in a book except for an hour or two at a time. I'm always stopping to ask myself if I'm not neglecting something, just as I used to do while the children were little. You see, I'm not a clever woman like you. I was made just to be a wife and mother, and nothing else."