of the closet, perhaps, at times to look at it.
What gave her strength when he was by was her promise to help him. It
was not by asking for leave to dream herself that she could make him
dream the less. All done for you, Tommy! It might have helped you to
loosen a few of the feathers.

Sometimes she thought it might not be Tommy, but herself, who was so
unlike other people; that it was not he who was unable to love, but
she who could not be loved. This idea did not agitate her as a
terrible thing; she could almost welcome it. But she did not go to him
with it. While it might be but a fancy, that was no way to help a man
who was overfull of them. It was the bare truth only that she wanted
him to see, and so she made elaborate inquiries into herself, to
discover whether she was quite unlovable. I suppose it would have been
quaint, had she not been quite so much in earnest. She examined
herself in the long mirror most conscientiously, and with a
determinedly open mind, to see whether she was too ugly for any man to
love. Our beautiful Grizel really did.

She had always thought that she was a nice girl, but was she? No one
had ever loved her, except the old doctor, and he began when she was
so young that perhaps he had been inveigled into it, like a father.
Even David had not loved her. Was it because he knew her so well? What
was it in women that made men love them? She asked it of David in such
a way that he never knew she was putting him to the question. He
merely thought that he and she were having a pleasant chat about
Elspeth, and, as a result, she decided that he loved Elspeth because
she was so helpless. His head sat with uncommon pride on his shoulders
while he talked of Elspeth's timidity. There was a ring of
boastfulness in his voice as he paraded the large number of useful
things that Elspeth could not do. And yet David was a sensible and
careful man.

Was it helplessness that man loved in woman, then? It seemed to be
Elspeth's helplessness that had made Tommy such a brother, and how it
had always appealed to Aaron! No woman could be less helpless than
herself, Grizel knew. She thought back and back, and she could not
come to a time when she was not managing somebody. Women, she
reflected, fall more or less deeply in love with every baby they see,
while men, even the best of them, can look calmly at other people's
babies. But when the helplessness of the child is in the woman, then
other women are unmoved; b