uldn't be honest, would it?"
"Barbara!" she said in a terrable tone. "First disobedience, and now
sarcasm. If your father was only here! I feel so alone and helpless."
Her tone cut me to the Heart. After all she was my own mother, or at
least maintained so, in spite of numerous questions enjendered by our
lack of resemblence, moral as well as physicle. But I did not offer
to embrase her, as she was at that moment poring out her tea. I hid my
misery behind the morning paper, and there I beheld the fated vision.
Had I felt any doubt as to the state of my afections it was settled
then. My Heart leaped in my bosom. My face sufused. My hands trembled so
that a piece of sausage slipped from my fork. HIS PICTURE LOOKED OUT AT
ME WITH THAT WELL REMEMBERED GAZE FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE MORNING PAPER.
Oh, Adrian, Adrian!
Here in the same city as I, looking out over perchance the same
newspaper to perchance the same sun, wondering--ah, what was he
wondering?
I was not even then, in that first Rapture, foolish about him. I knew
that to him I was probably but a tender memory. I knew, to, that he was
but human and probably very concieted. On the other hand, I pride myself
on being a good judge of character, and he carried Nobility in every
linament. Even the obliteration of one eye by the printer could only
hamper but not destroy his dear face.
"Barbara," mother said sharply. "I am speaking. Are you being sulkey?"
"Pardon me, mother," I said in my gentlest tones. "I was but dreaming."
And as she made no reply, but rang the bell visciously, I went on,
pursuing my line of thought. "Mother, were you ever in Love?"
"Love! What sort of Love?"
I sat up and stared at her.
"Is there more than one sort?" I demanded.
"There is a very silly, schoolgirl Love," she said, eyeing me, "that
people outgrow and blush to look back on."
"Do you?"
"Do I what?"
"Do you blush to look back on it?"
Mother rose and made a sweeping gesture with her right arm.
"I wash my hands of you!" she said. "You are impertanent and indelacate.
At your age I was an inocent child, not troubleing with things that did
not concern me. As for Love, I had never heard of it until I came out."
"Life must have burst on you like an explosion," I observed. "I suppose
you thought that babies----"
"Silense!" mother shreiked. And seeing that she persisted in ignoring
the real things of Life while in my presence, I went out, cluching the
precious pap
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